1,000 jobs sweeten proposal

• By GARY PERILLOUX
• Advocate business writer
• Published: Mar 7, 2008 - Page: 1D - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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Gov. Bobby Jindal will commit $14 million — much of it contingent on legislative action — to enable Edison Chouest Offshore to build a second Houma shipyard that would be the company’s fifth and largest marine manufacturing facility.

Privately owned, Edison Chouest hasn’t disclosed how much it will spend at the Port of Terrebonne but the company’s capital investment would be a minimum of $60 million and could approach $100 million, according to state officials.

The company also plans to create 1,000 jobs in just two years, a monumental task considering the tight Louisiana job market for skilled workers. Still, Edison Chouest has been attacking the manpower challenge for more than two years while it has put the project together. In 2006, it donated 50 acres to the Port of Terrebonne to pave the way for state participation in the project, which will include dredging a navigation channel deeper than the current 20-plus feet and building bulkhead structures for the shipyard.

“If you take a snapshot of this industry now, people are building new vessels fast and furiously,” said Lanny Thibodeaux, Edison Chouest’s corporate communications director. “The game becomes about capacity. We’ve got four large shipyards now but we need even more.”

Jindal will ask the Legislature to give $10 million to the project in a line item in the upcoming second special session this month, said Amy Ferguson, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Economic Development. Jindal also will place $4 million into the project from the governor’s rapid response fund for economic development.

Driving the deal is bigger demand for huge offshore oil vessels that will supply platforms drilling the deepest wells ever plumbed in the Gulf of Mexico. What Edison Chouest considers its bread-and-butter supply vessels now are 280-foot ships. The new subsidiary, to be called LaShip, would handle hull lengths greater than 350 feet.

Galliano-based Edison Chouest employs 6,500 people worldwide and is the region’s largest private employer, Thibodeaux said. Here’s a snapshot of current Edison Chouest shipbuilding facilities:

• In Larose, the company’s oldest yard opened in 1974, North American Shipbuilding employs 850.
• In Houma, North American Fabricators is the company’s first shipyard in Terrebonne Parish and employs 525 people in a facility opened in 1996.
• In Brazil near Rio de Janeiro, Navship employs 750 in shipbuilding facilities nearly complete.
• Gulfship, in Gulfport, Miss., also is about 90 percent complete and employs 375 workers.

Edison Chouest’s business model is to build and operate its own fleet for a diverse set of customers with vessels that help dock nuclear submarines and battleships for the U.S. Navy’s Military Sealift Command, ships that break ice for National Science Foundation research in the Arctic and Antarctic and supply vessels for such oil customers as BP, Shell, ExxonMobil and Chevron.

Company founder Edison Chouest, now 90, began the company 48 years ago with a shrimp boat converted into an offshore utility vessel. Sons Gary and Laney run the company now, and Gary Chouest recently purchased a 25 percent interest in the New Orleans Hornets.

The company doesn’t disclose precise ship numbers but builds dozens of new vessels annually, Thibodeaux said.

Parts of the work force puzzle for its new Houma shipyard are still being assembled, but Thibodeaux said Houma has assets in place that will help.

The 50-acre shipyard site, where construction is weeks away and ships will be launched from as soon as 2009, lies in a cul-de-sac at the end of Dickson Road in Houma’s industrial east side. Its neighbor will be Gulf Island Fabrication, another 1,000-plus employer that builds offshore drilling platforms.

Just up Dickson Road from each company is Fletcher Technical Community College’s Louisiana Marine & Petroleum Institute, where many of the LaShip workers will be trained, Thibodeaux said.

“That’s a beautiful thing,” he said of the Fletcher facility. “We realize what a challenge it will be to recruit, train and house (that’s a magic word) 1,000 skilled men and women. We’re up to the challenge. The state has shown us tremendous faith to get us to this point and we’ve got to show that faith back in delivering a first-class shipyard.”