History of the Offshore Oil and Gas Industry in Southern Louisiana, Interim Report, Volume I: Papers on the Evolving Offshore Industry

Austin, Diane; Carriker, Bob; McGuire, Tom; Pratt, Joseph; Priest, Tyler; Pulsipher, Allan

The evolution of the oil and gas industry and its movement to the offshore has been one of the fundamental forces shaping Louisiana’s culture, geography, society and economy during the twentieth century. In the late 1920’s and into the ‘30’s, the lakes, marshes and bayous of southern Louisiana began to rival the famous Spindletop salt dome in neighboring Texas in the production of fossil fuels. Workers flocked in from northern Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas – all of them “Texians” to the local shrimpers, trappers, and farmers. The locals, for the most part, accommodated the outsiders. And many soon found jobs as roustabouts, roughnecks, and drillers with the big operators - the Texas Company, the California Company, Humble, and Shell. Others put their invaluable knowledge of the waters and the marshes to good advantage. The Texians needed these skills to explore the foreign geography of the coast. A consortium of companies led by Kerr-McGee and Phillips Petroleum completed the first outof- sight-of-land well in 1947 off Morgan City, marking a new phase in the evolution of Louisiana’s oil and gas industry. Hamlets and towns would be transformed to support the offshore industry, which now is producing oil and gas in water depths of 8,000 feet, 200 miles off the coastlines of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. As a collection of structures, the more than 4,000 offshore platforms represent a significant part of the nation’s stock of productive physical capital. As habitat for fish and other sea life, these structures are some of the largest additions to a natural ecosystem ever made as a consequence of human activity. The repercussions on labor markets and local economies of the movement offshore changed communities, institutions and businesses all along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico in fundamental and defining ways. New Orleans, linked to Harvey on the opposite bank of the Mississippi River, became a regional hub of operations for offshore activities, second only to Houston. Morgan City and Houma grew as fabrication centers and staging bases for the offshore rigs and platforms. Humble Oil Company built its headquarters on the barrier island at Grand Isle, as did Freeport at its company town of Port Sulphur along the lower Mississippi River. Lafayette aggressively led as a regional administrative oil center. In the often indeterminate edge between land and water, ports were built to access the Gulf. The envy of these now is Port Fourchon at the end of Highway 1 along Bayou Lafourche, supplying and servicing the newest expanse of deepwater exploration and production. The history of the offshore oil and gas industry in Louisiana is also a story of national and international diffusion and influence. Corporations and businesses that were born in the Gulf grew and expanded to distant corners of the world. In addition to the oil and gas companies that made their home in the Gulf, regional entrepreneurs found a fertile ground for developing businesses to provide specialty services and supplies to the offshore oil and gas industry. Both the oil and gas companies and the myriad service and supply companies depended on everexpanding technologies that were imported from, and later exported to, places outside the region. Yet the story of how this came about -- how the offshore oil and gas industry progressed from humble beginnings to an information-intensive force whose ability to perform in hostile environments is often compared to the manned space program--is not well known or understood. Even less well documented are the effects that the evolution of the offshore oil and gas industry has had on coastal communities and institutions.