Lords & Serfs Part 3 - Buy Boeing

How the extraction economy works, who it works for, and how it stays hidden in plain sight

Tad Theriot grew up shrimping in Cameron Parish, Louisiana. He put his children through college on a single boat. He did not inherit wealth or connections or access to the men who make decisions about the places where he lives and works. He had the Gulf, and he had the knowledge of it that comes from a lifetime on the water, and for a long time that was enough.

It is not enough anymore.

The waters where Tad shrimps are the same waters through which liquefied natural gas tankers now move, massive ships loaded with American energy bound for buyers in Berlin and Beijing. The shrimp catch in Cameron Parish is roughly half what it was before the plants arrived. The energy bills are rising, the federal government’s own projections link LNG exports directly to higher domestic energy prices, simple supply and demand, American households forced to compete with foreign buyers for access to American gas. A dredging incident by Venture Global, the company that operates the Calcasieu Pass export terminal, spilled hundreds of acres of mud into the bayou and killed roughly half of Tad’s oyster crop. The company offered some affected residents $20,000 on the condition that they could never sue or speak negatively about Venture Global again.

Tad did not take the offer.