DNR bidding tainted?

PHOTO: A 69-acre tract (left) is mislabeled as being on Bayou Latanier when advertised for bid by the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources in April 2014. The same area (right) is correctly labeled Bayou Postillion in an offering for a 66-acre tract. The same thing happened in an earlier offering when Bayou Postillion was mislabeled Bayou Gravenburg. (Louisiana Department of Natural Resources)

An oil and gas landman who blew the whistle on the Atchafalaya Basin Program dredging canals for drilling companies and someone at the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources allegedly rigging bidding on a lucrative mineral lease in the Basin says it’s happening all over again.
Dan Collins of Dan S. Collins, CPL & Associates, Inc., has filed a public records request with DNR’s Office of Mineral Resources in an effort to find out how Bayou Postillion got the name Bayou Latanier when drilling rights recently went up for lease on a 69-acre tract in a proven field.
The name “Bayou Postillion” rings a bell in the oil and gas industry. It’s where production of natural gas reached 100 million cubic feet a day, generating over a million dollars a day in revenue when prices were at their peak.
The only Bayou Latanier on record in Louisiana is up in Rapides Parish. There is a small bayou named Latania in the area but not where “Bayou Latanier” is shown on the public notice.
Associated with the lease is another ABP “water quality” dredging project on Bayou Fourche, which Collins says will facilitate further production of the Bayou Postillion/Bayou Latanier field.
He says he has seen this pattern of dredging and obfuscation before.
As a landman, Collins was hired to trace ownership and acquire easements for the Atchafalaya Basin Program and the Coastal Restoration Program, both DNR. Starting back in 2007, Collins says he begin to detect what he believed were violations of environmental law, which he reported to DNR, the Board of Ethics, the Legislative Auditor, the Attorney General and to the office of Gov. Bobby Jindal.
He says the Bayou Postillion Water Quality Project “effectively created an oil and gas access canal, at the state’s expense, for the private development of oil and gas exploration activities, and that the Atchafalaya Basin Program ... failed to perform wetland mitigation as required by State and Federal Law.”
Mitigation for activity in wetlands can cost operators millions of dollars.
Moreover, Collins says it came to his attention that when the lease went up for bids, Bayou Postillion was mislabeled “Bayou Gravenburg,” which is a waterway on the opposite side of the Basin some 20 miles away.
“The official Notice of Publication prepared by the Office of Mineral Resources advertising the State’s water bottom properties available for oil and gas lease was changed to give the appearance of another area and then forwarded to thousands of potential bidders under the State’s public bidding process,” Collins said.
If his hypothesis is true, the alleged thimblerig would appear to be working. This latest offering, on some 37 acres of state water bottoms located at the terminus of the ABP’s “water quality” dredge project, received only one bid.
Collins says he was rewarded for his diligence by being frozen out state jobs. He filed a whistleblower suit in 19th Judicial District Court claiming retaliation by DNR. The trial date, originally set for May 18, was postponed to Nov. 16 at the state’s request.
Meanwhile, DNR has promised to deliver documentation on the nomination and advertisement of the Bayou Postillion/Bayou Latanier lease in two weeks.
“It’s happening in OMR,” Collins said. “Someone there is mislabeling the tract to give some bidder an edge.”
He said he’s certain he can show it but he’s not that confident he can get anyone to do something about it.