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From left, Danos Fabrication Division Security and Office Services Manager Manager Kent Lirette stands next to Mark Danos, division manager for construction and fabrication, Wednesday inside the company’s main fabrication facility in Amelia.
(The Daily Review Photo by Zachary Fitzgerald)

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Danos’ workers build structural items Wednesday at the company’s main fabrication facility in Amelia.
(The Daily Review Photo by Zachary Fitzgerald)

Danos: Fabrication facility to bring 500 jobs to Amelia

By ZACHARY FITZGERALD zfitzgerald@daily-review.com

An executive for oil field services company, Danos, says the company has long-term plans to employ 500 people at its new fabrication facility on 190 acres of property it began leasing at the end of August replacing previous tenant McDermott.
Danos’ fabrication shop has been located in Larose for many years, Mark Danos, the company’s division manager for construction and fabrication, said Wednesday. “The challenge with that is it’s landlocked so we’ve been limited with size of the structures that we can build. Whatever we built had to be able to fit on the back of a truck,” Mark Danos said. “Thus, you’re limited to what you can put on the road.”
Danos is a family-owned company was founded 67 years ago in Lafourche Parish, he said.
The company looked at expanding and locating its fabrication facility somewhere on the water, Mark Danos said. “Once you’re on the water, no longer are you constrained by road width. Whatever you can put on the back of a barge is what you can build,” Mark Danos said.
Over the next couple years, Danos plans to hire up to 500 employees as needed in Amelia, he said. “We have a long-term vision for being here. The oil industry is cyclical … We’re in a cycle now. We’ve been operational for 67 years so going through the cycles isn’t anything we haven’t experienced before,” Mark Danos said.
The bulk of positions Danos will need includes welders, fitters, riggers, electricians, painters and scaffold builders, Danos said. In addition to those types of jobs, Danos will need project managers, engineers, draftsmen and administrative support personnel, he said. “To support a contingent of 500 people, you need a little bit of everything,” he said.
Company leaders canvassed the Gulf Coast for a place to locate its fabrication yard, he said. “When we found this facility, it made a lot of sense because the facility was here,” Mark Danos said. Any fabrication work the company needs to do can be done at the Amelia facility, he said.
Because the former tenant, McDermott, already had some large structures in place, Danos saved about a year versus trying to build a new operation from scratch, Mark Danos said.
Danos settled on coming to Amelia by the end of August and signed a long-term lease with the landowner, he said. Workers are currently modifying the facility to meet the company’s needs, he said.
The company recently completed its first project and is operational in Amelia, he said. “Once we signed the lease, we immediately kicked into gear with cleaning and prepping,” Mark Danos said.
Port of Morgan City Executive Director Raymond “Mac” Wade said bringing in a company such as Danos is going to be great for the community. “It’s going to send a message that we need constant dredging on the (Atchafalaya River Bar) Channel to keep it open to its authorized dimensions so companies like this can prosper and grow our business in this area,” Wade said.
In August 2013, McDermott announced it would be moving its fabrication facility out of Amelia. Danos filled that spot and is already working on oil field fabrication projects, which are going to drive the demand to keep the channel open and dredged, Wade said.
Danos provides contract operators for the offshore oil and gas industry, workers that operate shore bases in support of the industry, warehouse workers, environmental services, a coating services division and the company’s most recent division is an electrical and instrumentation division, Mark Danos said.
The majority of the company’s business involves providing personnel to customers in the form of facility operators, he said.
Danos’ fabrication facility in Amelia will allow workers to build platforms and send them offshore in modules, Mark Danos said. The company’s personnel can then go install the modules wherever they to need to be placed, he said.
Oil prices affect the industry in the short-term and Danos is prepared to make adjustments, he said. However, many of Danos’ big projects take years to plan so many of those projects have been in the works long before oil prices began to drop, he said.
Many of the company’s lead positions in Amelia have already been filled, which are those employees who are helping with the layout of the facility, he said. Skilled workers will be brought in as Danos is successful with jobs, he said.
Danos tries to provide services from the start to the finish of a project, he said. “We’ve been filling in the gaps through the years as we’ve grown,” he said. “When one of our customers has an oil platform, we can operate it; we can build it; we can maintain it.”
Workers are tearing down some of the old buildings and cleaning the facilities at the site in Amelia, he said. “As those facilities are cleaned out, we’re occupying the 190 acres in a phased approach,” Danos said. The first phase of the company’s work in Amelia is in its main fabrication shop at the site, he said. Workers are rearranging, fixing, cleaning and organizing that shop, he said.
The fabrication shop can manufacture modules for any offshore or onshore needs, Mark Danos said. The company can build anything to go on the offshore facility, he said. Over time, offshore facilities need to be adjusted or modified, he said. Instead of having to shut down an offshore facility to make modifications, Danos constructs modules onshore that can then be dropped in place on an offshore facility similar to a LEGO piece, he said.
“We don’t have to do anything offshore other than hook it, unplug and re-plug,” Mark Danos said. The modules Danos builds are self-contained units that can go on any structure to keep the structures running, he said.
Danos pursues and bids projects across the U.S. and internationally, he said. Waterways allow Danos to transport items anywhere in the world, he said.
Danos is building a new headquarters facility in Houma, which will move from Larose, he said. The company will still keep a fabrication facility in Larose, though, so Danos will have three facilities within an hour of one another, he said.
The company also has offices located across the Gulf Coast, in some of the shale plays in the U.S. and an international office in west Africa.

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