Pipe assembly plant coming to Port Isabel

PORT ISABEL - A $32 million pipe assembly plant that will create as many as 100 jobs here will attract companies that supply the offshore oil and gas industry, a port official said Monday.

Subsea 7, a Norwegian subsea engineering and construction company, will build its plant on a 58-acre site at the Port Isabel-San Benito Navigation District's turning basin, Bob Cornelison, the port's director, said.

Mayor Joe Vega called it "a big economic development project for our area."

The plant will bring new jobs to this port town where high gas prices and foreign competition have devastated the local shrimping industry, officials said.

"We believe this will create a diversity in the economy and offer employment that local residents here have not had recently," said Betty Wells, president of the Port Isabel Chamber of Commerce.

The plant will help to attract offshore oil and gas industry suppliers to the area, Cornelison said.

"One reason we worked so hard to attract Subsea 7 was a feeling that they would attract companies that supply their parts," Cornelison said. "We've been working ... to recruit off-shore production and exploration companies. There'll be more coming in the future."

Cornelison described the plant as a clean industry that won't harm the area's wildlife habitats.

"It's not a smoke-stack industry," Cornelison said. "It's light industry, which is good for Port Isabel."

The company signed a 25-year lease with the Port Isabel Logistical Offshore Terminal, a local business aimed at attracting offshore oil and gas industry suppliers to the area, Cornelison said.

The company that will start shipping pipe in mid 2009 will hire 80 to 100 workers, many of them welders and heavy equipment operators, he said.

The plant may work with Point Isabel High School's welding class to recruit workers, Vega said.

The plant will weld 40-foot lengths of pipe into 4,000-foot stalks that company ships will carry to offshore oil and gas fields in the Gulf of Mexico and off the Central American coast, said Greg Donnelly, manager for the company's Western Hemisphere operations.

"It's some of the highest specification welding in use today," Donnelly said.

Pipe diameters will range from 2 inches to 18 inches, he said.

"They're very, very high technology welds because these pipes have to survive for decades under 8,000 to 10,000 feet of water (and) there's no way to repair a leak at that depth," Cornelison said.

The plant will become the company's fifth pipe assembly operation, Donnelly said.

Subsea 7 operates other pipe assembly plants in Brazil, Scotland, Norway and West Africa, he said.