Impacts of environmental regulations on future resource development in louisiana wetlands

摘要

Louisiana wetlands require careful management to allow exploitation of non-renewable resources without destroying renewable resources. Current regulatory requirements have been moderately successful in meeting this goal by restricting development in wetland habitats. Continuing public emphasis on reducing environmental impacts of resource develoment is causing regulators to reassess their regulations and operators to rethink their compliance strategies. In addition regulators need forecasts of future E&P trends to estimate the impact of future regulations. To determine future activity we created two econometric models of North and Ourth Louisiana relating drilling activity, success ratio, and price to future wetland drilling locations. Results of the models indicate that environmental regulations have a small but statistically significant effect on drilling operations in wetland areas.