Congress members wear so many hats. Sometimes they’re passing laws to satisfy their big donors, sometimes they’re back at home pretending to listen to constituents before going back to pass laws to satisfy their big donors, and sometimes they’re directly working for their big donors.
Congressman Steve Scalise... is one of the oil industry’s busiest tour guides in Congress. Eight times, he’s lured colleagues onto helicopters bound for remote drilling rigs and production facilities in the Gulf of Mexico. His motive: to persuade even Democrats to overturn Obama administration rules that will add costs to offshore drilling.
Offshore oil rigs are impressive. I spent a few weeks on one back in … the mid-Jurassic? Or maybe it was 1979. While it wasn’t quite a city at sea, it was an impressively large building, considering it was parked somewhere with water to the horizon in all directions. Since then the rigs have gotten bigger and considerably more high tech. It’s one of those things that really ticks all the boxes for anyone who might be impressed by Big Engineering. Completely understandable why oil companies would want to get congressmen out there where they can show off.
But hey … Scalise—doesn’t that name sound familiar?
As Republicans race to do damage control on House Majority Whip Steve Scalise having spoken to a white supremacist group in 2002, the New York Times offers a hot take explaining how Scalise came to make that particular speech. See, it's not that he's personally a racist—far from it! the guy hardly even seems southern!—it's just that he's so ambitious and personable that he'll talk to anyone.
Yeah, that guy.
Scalise’s “I’m not a racist, I just hang with them” shtick didn’t keep him from becoming Mr. Oil and Gas—and hey, why should it? Here’s how Scalise described the latest tour on his own house web site.
On April 7 and April 8, the Members will tour a production platform in the Gulf of Mexico, participate in an aerial tour of Louisiana's coastline, take part in an energy roundtable discussion with local energy industry leaders, and visit Port Fourchon.
Being able to wrangle a collection of congressmen onto a helicopter and flying them out to an offshore rig for a day spent watching people work for a living no doubt leaves said congressfolk feeling jazzed up and completely better than those paper-pushers back in Washington. You know—the guys who only have decades of experience in working with rigs and who adopted the current set of rules after previous rules proved insufficient to stop dozens of deadly, environment-threatening disasters.
For oil and gas companies plumbing Gulf waters, Scalise is an evangelist of growing importance. First appointed in 2008 to finish the term of Bobby Jindal, who had been elected Louisiana’s governor, Scalise climbed the Republican leadership ladder and has emerged as the oil industry’s leading congressional ally -- a role that’s taken on new significance in an uncertain presidential election year.
We’re in a situation right now where oil and gas are so cheap that drilling has slowed dramatically. But oil and gas companies aren’t reacting by making investments in other sources of energy. Instead, they’re using this lull to prepare themselves for drilling deeper, drilling colder, and simply drilling more when prices turn around. For them, this is a “get things done while the eye is off the ball” season, and tour guide Scalise is their route to getting rules passed that no one will even notice for decades.