12_20240327_DUG GAS Conf_Gifford Briggs_API | Otter.ai

12_20240327_DUG GAS Conf_Gifford Briggs_API

Julia Kane28min

Brian Walzel (Hart Energy, Senior Editor)

00:01

Thank you, Jordan. As we've heard quite a bit throughout the day, in January the Biden administration announced the pause on permitting for new LNG terminals while it reevaluates its environmental analysis of new LNG projects. Since then, 16 states, including Texas and Louisiana, have challenged the ruling in a lawsuit. Also in January, the EPA granted the state of Louisiana primacy over class VI injection wells, or CCS wells. That ruling is a major step in the growth of carbon capture and sequestration projects in the state. Gifford Briggs, the Gulf Coast regional director of the American Petroleum Institute will join us to share more about the API's position on both the LNG pause the primacy ruling and the impact both could have on the natural gas industry in the Louisiana. Gifford oversees legislative, regulatory, and public affairs activities on behalf of the natural gas and oil industry in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi. Prior to joining the API, Gifford served as a president, Louisiana Oil and Gas Association for more then 13 years. Please welcome Gifford Briggs.

Gifford Briggs (API, Gulf Coast Regional Director)

01:10

Alright. How you all doing? Well that was awfully quiet. I know we're getting close to cocktail hour. I don't want the job of being the person right before cocktail hour, but I have a second to worst presentation time of all.

Gifford Briggs (API, Gulf Coast Regional Director)

01:26

So welcome. Thank you very much for having me. Gifford Briggs. I'm the Gulf Coast region director for API. And as you heard a little bit before, I formerly was with the Louisiana Oil and Gas Association. So it is great to be back in Louisiana. I live in Tallahassee. They love the oil and gas industry in Florida, but they don't want it anywhere near them. So it's good to be back with friends. So I started — my slides are not showing on the big screen. They're showing for me, which doesn't really help you. Ah, there we go.

Gifford Briggs (API, Gulf Coast Regional Director)

01:57

So real quick about API. Many of you may know API, but you may not know what we do on both sides, right? My first experience with API was in 1991, working in my dad's piping yard. I was cleaning grease off of a pipe collar with diesel and a wire brush, something that's probably not allowed these days anymore with a fiberglass cast form. But that was my first exposure, because on all of the pipe was a stamp that said American Petroleum Institute. API. And my father explained to me that that was the certification process. API manages a catalog of over 700 industry-wide standards that are applied across the globe. If you buy a can of motor oil, you can look at that motor oil and you'll see a stamp similar to that one to show that it's been made by API — according to API standards. So that's part of what we do in maintaining the catalog of standards for the industry.

Gifford Briggs (API, Gulf Coast Regional Director)

02:54

The other part of what we do, which is where I am, which is on the government affairs and industry advocacy side, the traditional trade association role. And that's where you see our advertisements on TV, or our President talking on the news. And really, we're out there advocating for the industry. I do state governmental affairs, so I cover the Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama. We're by far the best region of all of the API regions. We're the only one region that really, truly supports the oil and gas industry. The rest of them, they're fighting bad initiatives all around.

Gifford Briggs (API, Gulf Coast Regional Director)

03:29

So I started my journey in the oil and gas industry from an advocate standpoint in 2007, which seems like a decade ago. And I was introduced to the industry, and LNG, with this photo right here. Now, we're all very familiar with LNG industry today, but not because of this. This is an LNG ship at Cheniere importing LNG. We had a seven year supply of natural gas in 2007, and we were worried, in Louisiana, that we weren't going to have the natural gas necessary to power our country and to power our manufacturing and our chemical industrial complex in South Louisiana, so Cheniere was importing LNG. Right around the time that this picture was taken and this tanker arrived, the Haynesville shale was discovered where we are today. And it revolutionized, really, the global energy industry. And we went from showing this picture to me driving around in my compressed natural gas Ford Explorer Expedition, all over the Haynesville shale, and I had, and even, we even had our own natural gas pump to, to fill up at the office. It's a complete transition of the industry from one, from one situation to the other, because of the great work that the men and women in this room have done and will continue to do for our country and for the world.

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