Energy debate plays out in Louisiana oil town - latimes.com
By Alana Semuels, Los Angeles Times
May 20, 2012, 9:48 p.m.
LAFAYETTE, La. — Visitors to this oil town might be forgiven for wondering whether the BP oil spilland subsequent drilling moratorium ever happened. “Now hiring” signs are plastered on billboards around town, and hotels such as the Crowne Plaza are chock full of seminars training students to work on offshore rigs. Many offshore companies can’t find enough workers for the jobs they’re listing. This parish has the lowest unemployment rate in Louisiana, 4.8%.
Such is the opportunity on the offshore rigs that Sheila Clark, whose husband, Donald, died in the Deepwater Horizon explosion two years ago, said her 22-year-old son recently asked her how she’d feel if he went to work on a rig.
“I can’t stop him,” said Clark, who moved to Baton Rouge after her husband’s death. “He wants to make a good living for himself.”
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Those in Lafayette are divided over Obama’s record.
“We find there’s a lot of rhetoric coming from the politicians – they say they’re going to lift the moratorium, and then they don’t issue permits,” said Keith Mosing, chief executive of Frank’s International, which provides tools and workers for offshore rigs. He says 80% of the equipment he makes in Lafayette is going overseas.
But Volker Rathmann, president of Collarini Energy Staffing, which finds workers for offshore rigs, said the demand for such workers had tripled in the last year and a half.
“If you take the rhetoric and politics out of it, I don’t think the Obama administration is very far away from what the Republicans are saying,” he said. “If you can spell drilling, you can get a job.”