Louisiana Carves Out Oil And Gas Construction From Its Home Court Statute

Act 132 of the 2026 Regular Session (House Bill 170), effective August 1, 2026, amends Louisiana's home court statute, La. R.S. 9:2779, in a way that matters for any out-of-state party building or contracting for work in Louisiana.

As background, La. R.S. Section 9:2779 voids forum-selection and choice-of-law clauses in construction contracts that point outside Louisiana, where one party is Louisiana-domiciled and the work is performed in-state. It has long been a trap for out-of-state companies that assume their home state's law or courts will govern a Louisiana project. Act 132 adds, for the first time, a statutory definition of "construction contract" for purposes of La. R.S. Section 9:2779, and it excludes four categories of work from that definition entirely: (1) dirt or gravel roads used to access oil and gas wells and associated facilities; (2) oil flow lines or gas gathering lines up to the point of commingling for transportation to storage or transmission lines; (3) deeds, leases, easements, licenses, or similar instruments granting a property interest, even if they include rights to design, construct, alter, renovate, repair, or maintain improvements, and (4) upstream, midstream, and downstream oil, gas, chemical, petrochemical, and fuel manufacturing facilities and infrastructure, including refineries, processing plants, terminals, and appurtenant structures.

The fourth category appears to be the most significant one. Contracts for refinery, processing, terminal, and similar oil and gas infrastructure work would seem to fall outside La. R.S. Section 9:2779's protections altogether, which suggests that out-of-state forum-selection and choice-of-law clauses in those contracts could be enforceable without the workaround discussed below, though this reading has not yet been tested in the courts.

These four exclusions mirror the existing exclusions already built into Louisiana's Contractor's Anti-Indemnity Act, La. R.S. 9:2780.1, so the legislature is aligning the two statutes' scope rather than creating a new standard. The amendment applies retroactively, to contracts, subcontracts, and purchase orders entered into on or after September 6, 1991.

This is notable because out-of-state companies constructing facilities in Louisiana routinely try to designate another state's law to govern their contracts. Historically, the workaround has been to pair a choice-of-law clause with an arbitration provision, since the Federal Arbitration Act has been held to preempt La. R.S. Section 9:2779's home court protections in that context. See OPE Int'l LP v. Chet Morrison Contractors, Inc., 258 F.3d 443, 447 (5th Cir. 2001) (holding that the FAA preempts La. R.S. 9:2779 to the extent the statute would otherwise nullify a contractual provision requiring arbitration outside Louisiana and application of another state's law). 

For work that fits within one of Act 132's exclusions, particularly oil and gas infrastructure, parties may have a more direct path than routing around La. R.S. Section 9:2779 through arbitration. A straightforward choice-of-law and forum-selection clause pointing outside Louisiana may now be enforceable on its own terms, though how courts will apply the new exclusions in practice remains to be seen.

Companies active in Louisiana's oil and gas construction sector may want to revisit their standard contract forms in light of this change, and counsel should consider, at the outset of any project, whether the scope of work could fit one of the four statutory exclusions before assuming La. R.S. Section 9:2779 applies.

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