Tracing the Flow of Oil and Gas: A Spatial and Temporal Analysis of Environmental Justice in Coastal Louisiana from 1980 to 2010

Abstract

Minority communities in Louisiana have long been at the forefront of the struggle to achieve environmental justice. To date, much of this struggle has focused on communities located in the Mississippi River Chemical Corridor, where rural African American communities have historically been disproportionately impacted by the growth of the petrochemical industry. This research examines the broader oil and gas production chain and shows that minority groups residing in Louisiana's coastal zone have been increasingly disproportionately impacted by the development of the offshore oil and gas industry. Extracting and processing oil and gas is an energy-intensive undertaking that requires an expansive network of land-based infrastructure. This infrastructure includes gas processing plants, refineries, petrochemical plants, and a pipeline network that link extraction activities to production activities. In addition, there is extensive infrastructure associated with oil and gas development that is not usually considered within the oil and gas production hierarchy, such as platform fabrication, ship building, and pipe coating. Due to the often-conflicting geographies of risk and settlement, these hazards are not equitably distributed across social groups. Using a combined risk and proximity-based hazardousness of place model to assess the cumulative impacts of these industries, this research found that oil and gas development from 1980 through 2010 has increasingly impacted the Native American and Asian populations in coastal Louisiana, groups that have historically been dependent on the region's abundant fisheries. This research also found that racial and ethnic minority groups are more likely to be disproportionately impacted than other socially vulnerable population groups.