Market fluctuations are an ever-present reality in the oil and gas industry, which means a company like Gulf Island Fabrication must be quick to respond to new opportunities.
As 10/12 Industry Report details in feature from its current issue, Gulf Island’s very existence was born out of the oil and gas downturn of the mid-1980s, when cofounders Doc Laborde and Baton Rouge catalog showroom industry magnate Huey Wilson created the Houma company to build offshore oil platforms.
Since those early days, Gulf Island—now headquartered in Houston—has become a leader in the fabrication, maintenance and servicing of structures, facilities and vessels within the energy sector and beyond. With several locations along the Gulf Coast, its craftsmen have built several “first of their kind” structures around the globe.
So when Gulf Island got the call from Deepwater Wind to assist with the fabrication of the jackets for the country’s first offshore windfarm, it jumped at the chance. The company had been watching the fledgling offshore wind market for years, waiting for the right opportunity. Deepwater Wind, a leading U.S. offshore wind and transmission developer, wanted to incorporate Gulf Island’s offshore platform capabilities to develop its five-turbine wind farm in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Block Island, Rhode Island.
Roy Francis, Gulf Island’s senior vice president of business development, says his company began actively pursuing wind farms earlier this decade after recognizing similarities to work it was already doing. A native of Destrehan, Francis came to work at Gulf Island more than 11 years ago.
“We knew that if the industry ever started to take off we wanted to be a part of it,” he adds. “We had talked to Deepwater and provided them with budgetary pricing and talked through the constructability of it. We realized that the jackets were quite similar to the ones we were building for platforms in the Gulf.”
Ultimately, it proved to be a good diversification move for Gulf Island.
“We have the necessary capacity and 32 years of experience building foundations. It was a good interaction and a good customer,” Francis says.
The 30-megawatt wind farm came online last fall. Francis says the project came along at just the perfect time—the oil market downturn has significantly impacted the production of new platforms in recent years.
“Our numbers are down right now like the rest of the industry,” he says.
Bill Blanchard, vice president and general manager of Gulf Island’s fabrication group in Houma, says when times are good there are about 450 workers at the facility, but the oil drop hit them hard.
“We probably got down to 100 and maybe 60 in the field,” he adds. “We have had some relatively large layoffs, but it wasn’t to the magnitude that it might have been. We were somewhat successful in placing certain personnel within our other companies.”
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