Ports serve as pipline to the Gulf of Mexico

Ports in the Tri-parishes are seeing an expansion in the number of tenants while also battling the effects of nature.

The Port of Morgan City, created in 1957 and 29 miles from the Gulf of Mexico, values its location on the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway and its access to an unrestricted channel to the Gulf of Mexico, said executive director Jerry Hoffpauir.

“It’s a straight shot to the Gulf,” Hoffpauir said. “It doesn’t go through any locks.” The channel is 20 feet deep and 400 feet wide.

A recent U.S. Coast Guard study recorded thousands of passages of vessels going north, south, east and west of the Intracoastal Waterway.

“It’s extremely important,” he said.

Besides the channel to the Gulf and the Intracoastal Waterway, the port uses the Atchafalaya River and bayous Bouef, Black and Chene to access the rest of the U.S. and overseas.

The port, which can handle small- to medium-sized vessels, also has a north-south alternate route to locks located at Port Allen.

Hoffpauir said a rail link coming into the port’s transit shed is another valuable asset.

All the land at the port is leased to Cenac Offshore, the facility’s operator. The land is owned by the H & B Young Foundation.

“We have a lease for 50 years,” Hoffpauir said.

In 2009, the port purchased 24 acres of property and leased it to Houston-based InterMoor, a supplier of mooring and subsea technology which has offices in Amelia and Fourchon.

Among developments affecting the port in 2010, Hoffpauir said Cenac Offshore purchased a ship that will have regularly-scheduled service to Central and South America beginning next year.

The port will also study fluid mud called fluff that has been accumulating at the facility. Fluid mud, which has the consistency of pudding, sometimes develops where fresh and salt water meet.

The mud accumulates in the Mississippi and Calcasieu rivers, but more so at the Port of Morgan City.

The port dredges the mud. Congress mandates that the channel must be maintained at 20 feet.

“A few of the findings (from the study) show we may be able to manage the fluff to keep it a 20 foot channel,” Hoffpauir said. “It will keep us as a deepwater port.”

The Port of Terrebonne in Houma is providing bulkheads and dredging for the construction of Edison Chouest’s LaShip shipyard, said port executive director David Rabalais. Work should be finished by early to mid-2010.

Rabalais said LaShip, which is expected to bring in around one thousand jobs, will probably begin constructing vessels before the work is complete.

“You don’t often have that type of opportunity come along with that type of impact going to an area,” he said.

Another development was the expansion of port tenant Performance Energy Services, the Houma oilfield services company founded in 2000. Performance Energy bought Trico Marine yards adjacent to the port and is developing the property, Rabalais said.

The port was also going to use a $700,000 state Economic Development Award to install a sewer plant that tenants could tap into, Rabalais said, but the parish is upgrading the sewer system in the Ashland area.

“Once the parish extends and upgrades, we will look to find funds to tap into the parish system,” Rabalais said.

Instead, the port is using the development award to hard-surface roads, he said.

In 2010, the port will build dry docks for the expansion of tenant Thoma-Sea Boatbuilders using Louisiana Port Construction and Development Priority Program funds. Gulf Island Fabrication is the contractor.

“We’re preparing the facility to receive the dry docks,” Rabalais said.

In Lafourche Parish, Port Fourchon needs $10 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to restore the beach on the Gulf of Mexico to the condition it was in before being damaged by hurricanes Gustav and Ike in 2008, said executive director Ted Falgout.

The beach still had damage from hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005. “Associating cost with a particular event becomes difficult with something like a beach,” Falgout said.

Apart from the beach, the port needs $5 million to repair damage from the hurricanes. The bathhouse and restroom at the recreational boat launch require repairs.

The contract to fix a breakwater has been bid and the work will be completed this winter. The cost is around $600,000, Falgout said.

The contract to repair the Belle Pass jetties-damaged severely by hurricanes Gustav and Ike-at the entrance to the port has been awarded and the work will be completed this winter as well.

Falgout said Port Fourchon’s niche is servicing oil production in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico, which has been insulated largely from the national economic downturn.

He said around 90 percent of activity at the port is transferring cargo coming down by barge and truck on to boats and helicopters to provide supplies for oil production in the gulf.

“We’re not unloading oil and gas at the port. That’s moved by pipe,” Falgout said. “But we unload all other cargo-machinery, commodities-to operate a city out there, like drinking water and tissue paper. They have to be unloaded on vessels to offshore and back. That’s what the port does.”

Falgout, who has been the port’s executive director since 1978, will step down from the position at the end of this year. Chett Chiasson, the port’s economic development director, was selected earlier this year to succeed him.

“We’ve been going over the next things the director has to deal with, the thought process required to run this organization,” said Falgout, the only executive director the port has had since it was created in 1960. “I fully expect Chett to do very well.”

“It’s been a large part of myself,” he said about leading the port for 31 years. “I’m proud of the accomplishments at the port during my tenure. I expect them to continue.”

Falgout plans to become involved with coastal restoration efforts after leaving the port.