The Minerals Management Service established the Louisiana Coastal Marine Institute (CMI) at Louisiana State University in 1992 to use highly qualified scientific expertise within Louisiana to collect and disseminate environmental information needed for Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) oil and gas and marineminerals decisions, address local and regional OCS-related environmental and resourceissues of mutual interest, and strengthen the MMS-LSU-State of Louisiana partnership in addressing OCSoil and gas and marine minerals information needs.

To address some of these concerns and share the cost for research of mutual interest, MMS and the State of Louisiana are entering into a fourth 5-year agreement to continue the established CMI at LSU. Louisiana was selected as the location for this CMI because of its’ proximity to a major oil and gas producing area offshore of the Gulf of Mexico. LSU is uniquely suited to participate by virtue of its flagship status within the State and by its nationally recognized scope and depth of marine and coastal expertise relevant to the broad range of OCS program information needs.

Over the course of the cooperative agreements, over $26 million in research contracts have been awarded by MMS through the CMI program to researchers at LSU, the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium (LUMCON), the University of New Orleans (UNO), and the University of Louisiana-Lafayette (ULL). In addition to funding the research of scientists at LSU, more than 100 graduate and undergraduate students have been supported through these projects.