Louisiana’s Sinking Coast Is $100 Billion Nightmare for Oil

The Phillips 66 oil refinery on the bank of the Mississippi River in Plaquemines Parish, near the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority’s Bayou Dupont Marsh and Ridge Creation.

Photograph: William Widmer/Redux

From 5,000 feet up, it’s difficult to make out where Louisiana’s coastline used to be. But follow the skeletal remains of decades-old oil canals, and you get an idea. Once, these lanes sliced through thick marshland, clearing a path for pipelines or ships. Now they are surrounded by open water, green borders still visible as the sea swallows up the shore.

The canals tell a story about the industry’s ubiquity in Louisiana history, but they also signal a grave future: $100 billion of energy infrastructure threatened by rising sea levels and erosion. As the coastline recedes, tangles of pipeline ...