Helping workers rebuild lives
Companies take out ads, set up temporary housing and give away cash
By DAVID IVANOVICH, KIM COBB and TOM FOWLER
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle
chron.com
PASCAGOULA, MISS. - Chevron Corp. is hurriedly erecting an evacuee village, the first step toward bringing its huge refinery here back on stream.
Exxon Mobil Corp. is running newspaper ads trying to locate employees, while Shell Oil Co. is offering workers emergency cash and interest-free loans.
Energy companies scrambling to restart operations along the Katrina-ravaged Gulf Coast are struggling to locate their workers and help them stitch together their lives before reporting back to work.
"We need our employees to have their minds on what they're doing," said Roland Kell, manager of Chevron's Pascagoula plant.
Certainly, energy industry employees have their work cut out for them. Katrina laid waste to power lines, crippled pipelines and knocked out more than 10 percent of the country's oil refining capacity at its worst.
In the coming week, refineries will be slowly getting back into production, but much work remains.
A spokeswoman for Marathon Oil said Monday the 245,000 barrel-per-day Garyville refinery in Louisiana would be up and operating today.
Shell reported that chemical plants in Mobile, Ala., and just outside New Orleans are slowly restarting.
But bringing back refineries owned by a Shell's joint venture with Saudi Aramco, called Motiva, may take longer. According to a statement from Motiva, the Convent and Norco refineries near Baton Rouge and New Orleans should be back on line this week.
Together they have a capacity to process 470,000 barrels of crude per day.
Valero Energy Corp., the largest U.S. oil refiner, said it expects to start up its refinery in St. Charles, La., at midweek. That company is still waiting to hear from nine of its employees in the area.
Locating the lost
The first challenge for these companies is locating the many workers the storm scattered. Many companies have set up hot lines for them.
Sometimes, however, those phone lines aren't enough.
Exxon Mobil ran an ad in the Chronicle over the weekend entreating workers from its Chalmette refinery to call in.
"We are anxious to make contact to ensure that you and your families are safe and to discuss any company assistance you may need," the ad said.
While workers may be eager to return to work, they'll need to feel like their loved ones are safe and adequately housed.
BP has more than 1,000 employees in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama — most connected with offshore oil and natural gas operations. While they all made it out alive, problems at home are still a burden for many. BP is offering generators to workers whose homes remain dark a week after the storm and temporary housing and a cash per diem if they head toward higher ground in Texas.
Chevron officials aren't contemplating restarting the 325,000-barrel-per-day Pascagoula refinery until sometime this week, when they hope to finish building temporary housing for 1,500. These structures include barracks-style tents for housing as well as food and hospital facilities. So far only about 300 of their 1,200 workers were homeless because of the storm, but the company wants to provide lodging for their employees' families as well. Kell said living space will be air-conditioned and meals will be catered.
The temporary housing should take the immediate pressure off employees until they are capable of providing their own housing, he said.
"We recognize the importance of restarting," Kell said. "But we need to make sure our people are mentally prepared for this."
Workers who have lost virtually everything also need cash.
Shell is offering workers $2,500 in emergency funds, as well as another $7,500 for repairs and replacement, and interest-free loans of up to $40,000.
Exxon is offering employees a one-time $5,000 lump-sum payment for emergency living expenses, as well as the use of company cars until month's end for reasonable personal use.
Repair work ahead
Much of the repair work remains to be done offshore.
Over the weekend the Coast Guard reported that 21 offshore platforms in the Gulf of Mexico were swamped by the storm, while 20 rigs were either damaged or are still missing.
All together, 265 platforms and rigs remain evacuated in the Gulf, according to the U.S. Minerals Management Service.
A little more than 1 million barrels a day of oil production, or 70 percent of daily average amount, and 5.2 billion cubic feet of natural gas production per day, or 54 percent of daily average in the Gulf of Mexico, remain shut in as of Monday, the agency reported.
Companies trying to send employees back offshore have been stymied by damage at key staging areas such as Port Fourchon, La.
J.P. Peplinski, director of oil-field services for TQ3Navigant, a company that coordinates transportation and housing for energy crews, said about "75 percent of our drilling clients' crews were back to work" by the end of last week.
"But the production companies have had a tougher time," she said.
Even before the storm, of course, the energy industry was desperate to find qualified workers. Hundreds of thousands have left this boom-and-bust industry over the past two decades and have been reluctant to return.
David Dismukes, a professor at Louisiana State University's Center for Energy Studies, believes a shortage of workers will continue to be a problem as the Gulf Coast's onshore economy tries to rebuild.
"The energy industry work force has been dwindling since 1996, so once rebuilding starts onshore, we're going to getting a lot of competition for labor," he said. "That welder we want repairing a platform will also be asked to work in downtown New Orleans."
david.ivanovich@chron.com kim.cobb@chron.com tom.fowler@chron.com Chronicle writer Lynn J. Cook contributed to this story.
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