1,000 jobs sweeten proposal- March 7, 2008
Gary Perilloux
2theadvocate.com
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.
Click here to read the entire article.