"Energy-Louisiana Style" at the 2010 Washington Mardi Gras

The theme of the 62ND annual Washington Mardi Gras Ball is “Energy-Louisiana Style.” That’s why Louisiana’s business leaders in attendance were looking forward to hearing from the luncheon’s keynote speaker Matthew Simmons, chairman emeritus of Simmons and Company, an investment banking firm for the nation’s energy industry. But when a technical snafu prevented Simmons from presenting his original Power Point presentation detailing the history and future of Louisiana’s energy industry, many in the audience, including executives of the nation’s leading oil and gas corporations, were taken aback when Simmons decided to call up his favorite “go-to” topic, wind energy in the state of Maine, and why he feels that windmills may one day replace oil derricks and natural gas platforms in the Gulf of Mexico as the supplier of our nation’s energy needs.

For a state that boasts the fact that more than one third of the nation’s energy supply flows through its land on a daily basis, it seemed a somewhat ambitious goal to suggest that our nation’s future energy needs could be met by wind technology, especially since the energy resources of the Evansville Shale discovery in North Louisiana and the massive deepwater Tiber Prospect in the Gulf of Mexico are only now beginning to tap into their potential. Many who have journeyed here to the nation’s capital feel that liquefied natural gas and compressed natural gas are the “green” fuels of the future, and that Louisiana’s rich history of entrepreneurship will once again provide the infrastructure to develop these energy sources as a supplement to oil and gas, to meet the energy needs of millions of Americans.

“We need to eventually do it all, ” said Bill Fenstermaker, of C.H. Fenstermaker and also this year’s Washington Mardi Gras King, “but it won’t happen tomorrow. Matthew (Simmons) is a well-respected, intelligent industry consultant, he didn’t have a chance to tell his whole story.”

KLFY