Tidewater: Company to maintain Louisiana presence

Even if Tidewater Inc., the world’s largest operator of offshore petroleum service vessels, decides to move its corporate headquarters to Houston, the company will retain a major presence in New Orleans and continue to employ hundreds in Louisiana, Tidewater’s head said Thursday.

Following the company’s annual meeting, Tidewater president Dean Taylor, who revealed last month that the move was being considered, said no definite timetable was in place for a decision, but the proposal was under serious study.

“If a move is in order, we need to get it done,” he said. “If it’s not, we need to let you know and end this speculation.”

In an interview with The Associated Press on June 20, Taylor said company executives who relocated for a time to Houston after Hurricane Katrina found the city easier to work in and close to many of the petroleum service company’s clients.

On Thursday, Taylor said he enjoyed living in New Orleans, but “any professional manager worth his salt looks at something not from a personal standpoint, but from a corporate standpoint.”

Three senior Tidewater officers are now living in Houston and a headquarters move would likely involve moving two or three other officers, he said. The current New Orleans staff of 70 would remain in the city.

Tidewater’s largest Louisiana presence is in St. Mary Parish. Of the company’s 8,000 employees, about 1,000 are domestic, with 400 to 500 of those in Louisiana, Taylor said.

The company’s possible corporate headquarters move has stirred concern in New Orleans, which is staggering through a recovery from Katrina and, almost two years later, has seen little major corporate activity other than moves out of the city.

Earlier this year, one of the state’s last Fortune 500-headquartered companies, Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc., moved its headquarters to Phoenix after buying Phelps Dodge Corp. for $25.9 billion and creating the world’s largest publicly traded copper company. That company also said the shift out of New Orleans only involved top officials.

In 2006, Murphy Oil Corp. decided to close its New Orleans exploration and production office, moving about 100 positions to Houston. Chevron Corp. is planning to move its 500 Gulf of Mexico exploration and production workers from New Orleans to St. Tammany Parish later this year.

The city has lost thousands of white-collar jobs in the oil industry over the past 20 years because of the oil price crash of the 1980s, petroleum company consolidations in Houston and technical advances that have downgraded the need for separate New Orleans offices.

At the same time, petroleum service and support companies also have shifted more operations to Houston, including McDermott International Inc., which now calls the Texas city home instead of New Orleans.