Chris Gary 🇺🇸

Vermilion Parish has 5,139 oil and gas wells. Only 109 are still producing. Everyone talks about what Starbase Louisiana might bring to our parish, but fewer people talk about what we've already lost. When I was growing up, oil and gas in the south end of Vermilion Parish helped pay for a lot of things here at home. It also put food on the table for most of the families I knew, including mine. My mom and dad both worked jobs tied to the oilfield, and my own work is still tied to it today. I wanted to see what those numbers look like now, so I decided to do some research. I began with the parish as a whole. The state collects a severance tax on oil and gas pulled out of the ground. In fiscal year 2018-19, the state collected $19.1 million in severance tax on oil and gas produced in Vermilion Parish. In fiscal year 2025-26, it was about $10.3 million. That is down about 46 percent in seven years, according to Louisiana Department of Revenue reports. I also looked at our schools. Much of the Vermilion Parish School Board's oil and gas money came from leases and royalties on its Section 16 land, which is land set aside to support our schools. A lot of it sits in the south end of the parish. In 2014, the School Board collected over $6 million in oil and gas revenue. In the 2024-25 school year, it collected about $150,000. That is a drop of roughly 97 percent. As far back as 2021, the local paper reported there was no drilling on that land and the district was losing millions. The money swings so much that board policy keeps it out of the general fund. Then there is the Police Jury, which runs parish government. Its severance tax money actually went up, from about $1 million in 2017 to about $1.24 million in 2023. The reason is in the state constitution. A parish gets one-fifth of the severance tax collected on its production, but only up to a cap. That cap was $850,000 in 2007 and rises with inflation each year. It was about $1.33 million in 2024-25. One-fifth of what Vermilion produces is well above that cap, so the Police Jury's share is held down by the cap, not by how much we produce. It's a small, steady slice of the money that comes out of our ground. Most of the rest goes to the state. Even the Sheriff's Office feels the shift. It doesn't get oil and gas royalties, but wells here are taxed as property, and they have lost a lot of value. In 2015, the parish's 604 taxable wells were assessed at about $42.3 million. By 2023, 555 wells were assessed at about $22.7 million. Oil and gas wells went from about 9 percent of the parish's assessed value in 2015 to about 5 percent in 2023. Homes and other property now carry a bigger share of the load for local services. You can see it on the map. Most of those wells are now plugged, dry, or idle. That is the bigger picture behind a lot of the conversations happening in our parish right now. The income our parish leaned on for decades has gotten smaller and less predictable. New industry, including Starbase Louisiana, could help fill some of that gap over time. But the slide in oil and gas money is a story of its own, and it is worth knowing. Thank you to @LAGovJeffLandry and Louisiana Economic Development for working to bring new opportunity to the south end of our parish. Places like ours have given a lot to this state, and it means something to see someone invest back in it. Sources: Louisiana Dept. of Revenue, Louisiana Tax Commission, Legislative Auditor audits, La. DENR Office of Conservation (SONRIS), The Advocate, Vermilion Today.