PMI Energy Services expanding here

PMI Energy Services is working on a roughly $3 million construction project creating a base for various oil field companies to operate from in an effort to bring those companies to the Morgan City area, Donald Mehrtens Jr., vice president of PMI Energy Services, said.
The company’s expansion at its Youngs Road facility has created 15 new immediate jobs and that number will reach more than 30 jobs to the parish within 18 months, Mehrtens said. The construction of the overall project will cost about $3 million. PMI Energy Services is a subsidiary of Superior Energy Services and provides drilling cleaning services, production maintenance cleaning services and environmental services.
Because the majority of the oil in Louisiana is drilled for offshore, PMI’s Shore Base expansion provides a warehouse and staging area for companies to bring equipment and people offshore, Mehrtens said.
Workers and equipment will be trucked into the facility, and supplies will be loaded onto vessels to be taken offshore by different companies, Mehrtens said. PMI’s lay-down yard and dock enables companies to store their equipment in order to move back and forth between offshore and Morgan City, Mehrtens said.
Jamie Holt, general manager for PMI’s Gulf of Mexico Business Unit, said boats traveling to the company’s Morgan City support dock will service the inland, coastal and shelf operations in the Gulf of Mexico.
Due to the boom in oil and gas drilling, particularly in deepwater drilling, Port Fourchon and other larger ports are overcrowded, Mehrtens said. “You’re seeing some need for some more dock area in places like Morgan City and other port locations,” Mehrtens said. Therefore, PMI decided to try to fill that need for more dock space in a less expensive port, he said.
Morgan City Harbor and Terminal District Executive Director Raymond “Mac” Wade said PMI’s new facility is going to be one of the primary facilities in Morgan City that will contribute to industrial growth in the city.
Vessels will deliver supplies to different offshore platforms while taking items from those platforms elsewhere, Holt said.
“What this is doing is bringing people and activity back to St. Mary Parish that relocated east and west of here in the 1990s,” Holt said.
Bringing oil field businesses back to the parish also provides more tax dollars, port fees, tonnage traveling through the port and economic development, Mehrtens said.
The facility includes a place to house companies’ logistics coordinators who come to the facility for management purposes, Holt said.
PMI is about three weeks from finishing the first phase of its construction on Youngs Road in Morgan City, which consists of temporary office sites for the logistic coordinators, Mehrtens said. This phase also includes finishing the company’s safety training and crew change building, Mehrtens said.
David Brady, operations manager for PMI’s drilling cleaning services Gulf of Mexico Business Unit, said the building can change crews of up to 200 people per week coming from outside the Morgan City area.
Superior Energy Services has about 22 acres at the Youngs Road site that includes land operated by PMI’s sister company, Subsurface Tools. PMI will also have long-term parking for crews going offshore.
The company had to redo the drainage, sewer and electricity at the site because the old facility had been in existence since the 60s and was outdated, Mehrtens said. The facility used to be operated by Mobil Oil, Holt said.
The second phase of the project consists of moving PMI’s corporate office building from Amelia to Morgan City by building a 16,000 square-foot office building at the front of its property on Youngs Road, Mehrtens said. Construction on the corporate office is slated to begin within the next few weeks and is expected to be finished by September, he said.