EXPOSED: Julia Letlow’s Fiancé Profits While Big Oil Uses Eminent Domain to Steal Louisiana Farmland for CCS

Julia Letlow’s fiancé, Kevin Ainsworth, is a registered lobbyist at Jones Walker actively representing CCS companies — including Blue Sky Infrastructure (building CO₂ pipelines and injection wells) and EnLink CCS. That’s not a “low blow” — it’s a clear conflict when she’s pushing policies that affect the industry he lobbies for.

Louisiana already lets these private companies use eminent domain to seize rights-of-way across private farmland for pipelines and pore space for injection. Bills to strip that power (like HB7) got killed in committee — even as landowners fight in court. Your family farm or timberland can be forced into this experiment whether you like it or not.

And for what? Big Oil & Gas are double-dipping: raking in massive federal 45Q tax credits for “capturing” carbon while still pumping and profiting from their core operations. They promise thousands of jobs and economic miracles, but if (when) this unproven-at-scale technology leaks, migrates, or causes pressure issues underground, it’s our agriculture that pays the price — ruined soil, contaminated aquifers for irrigation, compacted farmland from pipeline construction, and long-term uncertainty for rice, soybeans, sugarcane, crawfish, and cattle country.

No amount of temporary construction jobs is worth gambling Louisiana’s ag economy — one of our true pillars — on industry promises. We’ve seen the Satartia, MS pipeline incident. We don’t need to repeat it across our best farmland.

Local control with real veto power and no eminent domain for private profit should be the baseline. Anything less puts Big Industry ahead of Louisiana families and farmers.