Channel depth issues send McDermott from Morgan City to Gulfport

McDermott Inc. is closing its fabrication unit at Morgan City and moving it to Mississippi due to channel depth restrictions in Morgan City, the GulfportSun Herald reported Monday.
Chiquita is leaving Gulfport’s Port for New Orleans, the article stated.
Restrictions at Morgan City kept the company from “attacking the market,” Jackson Bullock, vice president of offshore resources, told the Sun Herald.
On Aug. 5, 2013, McDermott officials announced the company would be closing the fabrication yard in Amelia.
“Morgan City was a fantastic place for McDermott through the years,” Bullock said, and he expects the company to build the same type of relationship with Gulfport, according to the Sun Herald report.
Port of Morgan City Executive Director Raymond “Mac” Wade said the restrictions in Morgan City are due to the 20-foot channel depth limitation for vessels to sail out.
In a Sun Herald article, Bullock said the deep water regions in the northern Gulf are centered around the mouth of the Mississippi River, “where water is deepest, quickest.” Gulfport is 100 miles or more due north of that area.
Bullock said the 100 new jobs in spooling and fabrication of pipe for the oil and gas industry will be mostly non-union. All handling of goods at the port will be done by the union workers, and Bullock said he could not speculate how many jobs that will support, the Sun Herald reported.
In an Associated Press article, Port of Gulfport Director Jonathan Daniels said McDermott would be moving its current spool base from Morgan City. He said that in addition to full-time workers, McDermott would hire unionized longshoremen to load and unload cargo.
Steve Oldham, McDermott spokesman for investors and financial media, said Monday afternoon that the Gulfport facility would be a spool base that has dockside on deep water. “It’s just very specifically for subsea spooled pipe operations. It’s not a fabrication yard in the traditional sense,” Oldham said.
Oldham said McDermott did renew its lease at its former fabrication yard in Amelia, but does not have any plans for the facility right now. However, Oldham said it is not a given that McDermott would not use the facility in the long-term.
When asked whether the Gulfport facility was moving from another facility or was a new operation, Oldham said the facility was part of a new operation.
The Gulfport facility would prepare pipe for spooling onto a reeled pipe lay vessel. “These would take 30-foot lengths of pipe and weld them into mile-long strings,” Oldham said.
Compared to a typical fabrication yard, the Gulfport operation will be a “very small facility,” Oldham said.