WASHINGTON, DC – MARCH 24: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks with Hyundai Chairman Euisun Chung (R), Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry (C), Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) (L) and Ascension Parish President Clint Cointment in the Roosevelt Room of the White House March 24, 2025 in Washington, DC. During the event, it was announced that Hyundai will invest $20 billion in U.S. manufacturing, including a $5 billion investment in a Louisiana steel factory that will produce 1,500 jobs. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
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If natural advantages were the determining factor, Louisiana would likely rival Texas as an energy powerhouse among U.S. states. The Pelican State possesses a wealth of advantages: world-class ports and energy infrastructure; a highly skilled and experienced workforce; geology holding not just massive reserves of oil and natural gas, but also ideally suited for carbon capture and storage; and a population that understands the value that the oil, gas, and LNG industries deliver to their state in jobs and economic impact. Yet instead of leading the nation in energy dominance, the state has become a primary target for anti-energy activism and litigation aimed squarely at its oil and gas sector.
The reason has very little to do with any sort of true organic grassroots concern from the public. Instead, it is driven by a coordinated, heavily funded campaign financed almost entirely by out-of-state billionaire foundations determined to throttle America’s fossil fuel production. Data from the Pelican Institute’s recent report “Barriers to Louisiana Energy Dominance” provides a roadmap to the money trail.
Anti-Energy Activism ‘Like Peeling An Onion’
Between 2020 and 2025, the Pelican Institute documents at least $115.5 million in out-of-state funding flowed to a dozen Louisiana-based environmental advocacy groups, more than 98 percent of those groups’ total combined budgets. More than 70 percent of that targeted funding originated in California, Washington, D.C., and New York City. Major donors include Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Bezos Earth Fund, the Rockefeller Family Fund, the Tides Foundation, the Waverley Street Foundation, the Windward Fund (tied to the Arabella network), and several others with deep progressive ties.
“The anti-industry activism is like an onion. The more you peel back layers the more layers you find,” Daniel Erspamer, CEO of the Pelican Institute, told me in an email. “Just as the state is on the verge of turning back 100 years of damaging economic policy and is poised to lead the charge toward American energy dominance, punishing lawsuits and aggressive left-wing activism threatens to derail any progress. Foreign adversaries and anti-fossil fuel, left-wing funders obviously want these efforts to fail. Why others would choose to join that crusade is puzzling.”
The state presents numerous battlegrounds for this activism. Environmental groups challenged Louisiana’s application for primacy over Class VI carbon sequestration wells under the EPA, arguing the state’s framework was insufficiently stringent. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ultimately dismissed the case for lack of standing, but not before creating months of regulatory uncertainty that chills investment. Louisiana is one of only a handful of states granted such primacy, yet activists continue to portray well-regulated carbon capture as a “false solution.”
Three major LNG export terminals—CP2 LNG and Commonwealth LNG in Cameron Parish and Plaquemines LNG in Plaquemines Parish—face ongoing legal assaults. These projects represent billions in capital investment and thousands of high-paying construction and operations jobs. A federal appeals court recently ruled that activist plaintiffs in a case targeting a proposed deepwater port by Delfin LNG have no standing, but not before months of unnecessary delays, a big part of the strategy.
Perhaps most damaging are the dozens of coastal erosion and land-loss lawsuits filed by parish governments against more than 200 energy companies since 2013. These cases seek to impose retroactive liability on operations conducted lawfully under permits issued decades ago. In one high-profile 2024 verdict in Plaquemines Parish, a state court jury ordered Chevron to pay $745 million. The U.S. Supreme Court suspended that award in April, ruling the case should be tried in federal court. Regardless of the ultimate legal outcomes, the cumulative effect is a climate of perpetual litigation risk that raises the cost of capital and deters new investment across the entire energy value chain.
The economic consequences are measurable and huge. The Pelican Institute calculates that litigation-driven uncertainty and related regulatory headwinds have already cost Louisiana more than $600 billion in lost economic growth between 2009 and 2024. During that same period, oil and gas’s share of the state’s GDP fell from roughly 7 percent to under 3 percent—even as drilling activity and production surged in competing shale plays in Texas, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and North Dakota. Louisiana’s natural advantages have been blunted by imported activism rather than by geology or market forces.
Why Target Louisiana For Anti-Energy Activism?
The reasons why these advocacy groups and their billionaire funders would target Louisiana seem obvious. The Pelican State sits at the center of America’s Gulf Coast energy infrastructure. It is a critical node for LNG exports which have gained a dominant market position with the interruption of exports from Qatar. Its subsurface formations offer rich oil and gas resources along with some of the best carbon storage potential in the country. Activists understand that slowing or stopping projects here creates precedent and supply-chain disruptions that cascade across the country. Louisiana thus becomes a prime strategic target in the broader campaign to constrain domestic fossil fuel supply and raise energy costs for consumers.
The funding sources reveal the ideological nature of the effort. Bloomberg has pledged billions in a years-long campaign to phase out fossil fuels. The Bezos Earth Fund explicitly backs efforts to accelerate a transition to weather-reliant renewables. Rockefeller philanthropies, built on early oil wealth, have long bankrolled campaigns to restrict the very industry that created their fortune. These are not local citizens worried about their backyards, but coastal elites using Louisiana communities as proxies in a national ideological contest that they have spent billions pursuing for decades.
Far from environmentalism in the classic sense, this is essentially lawfare dressed up as grassroots advocacy.
Anti-Energy Activism Won’t End Unless It Is Forced
Texas has largely avoided this fate through a more predictable regulatory environment, stronger property rights, and a political culture less receptive to external pressure campaigns. Louisiana’s experience demonstrates what happens when those guardrails weaken – for example, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry’s ongoing decision to have his administration provide support for the coastal lawsuits. The state’s leaders and citizens now face a clear choice: continue allowing out-of-state money to dictate the pace of energy development or move aggressively to reassert control over the state’s energy development.
The data is unambiguous: Louisiana’s challenges in fully realizing its energy potential have little to do with any resource constraints and much to do with this sustained infusion of activist capital and litigation designed to keep those resources in the ground. Until those dynamics change – and they won’t change unless policymakers force the matter – the state will remain a hotbed for activism. Not because its people demand it, but because distant coastal billionaires have decided it serves their national and global agenda.