Port director: Ship to generate $3.6M annually

Preliminary figures from an economic impact study show that a ship, which began importing and exporting from the Port of Morgan City in August 2014, will bring in about $3.6 million annually to the community, Port Executive Director Raymond “Mac” Wade said Monday.
Wade was the guest speaker during the St. Mary Industrial Group luncheon meeting at the Petroleum Club of Morgan City.
In late August 2014, a ship, named Oslo Bulk 9 and leased by Purina Mills, began importing sea salt and exporting grain out of the port, he said. Purina Mills is owned by Land O’ Lakes, Wade said.
Port officials are in the midst of an economic impact study to determine what effects the ship’s trips to Morgan City have on the area, which Wade hopes will be completed by the end of the week, Wade said. As of Monday morning, Wade received some preliminary results from the study, which indicated that about $113,000 is generated in the area economy each time the ship pulls up to the Port of Morgan City dock, he said. “This is also newfound business,” Wade said.
Based on the 32 trips annually the ship is expected to make, more than $3 million will be generated in the community through personal income, state taxes and parish taxes, he said. “This number is fixing to change in the next few days,” he said. “This is just the direct stuff. You’ve got the indirect side that they’re doing the calculations now.” The ship is about 360 feet long, 60 feet wide and 105 feet tall, he said.
It imports 3,000 tons of sea salt on each visit to the port to be used for different purposes including water softening, Wade said. So far, Planters Rice Mills in Abbeville has exported 4,000 tons of rice on the ship one time, he said. On the ship’s next two trips to the Port of Morgan City, rice will continue to be exported to Haiti, he said. Planters Rice Mills used to export out of Lake Charles but got kicked out, then went to New Orleans and now is going to come to Morgan City instead of New Orleans, he said.
“The No. 1 priority at the port is navigation,” Wade said. “If we don’t have a reliable 20-foot channel, there is a negative impact on our stakeholders in the area.”
Wade called the Atchafalaya River Bar Channel “the Achilles heel for Morgan City,” he said. The Bar Channel starts at the mouth of the river and extends to about 20 miles offshore, he said. Dredging in the Bar Channel was just completed in early January, which was a $13.6 million project, Wade said.
The Bar Channel is authorized to be 400 feet wide and 20 feet deep, he said. “Our channel today is 275-foot wide. We do have 20-foot (depth),” Wade said. The Bar Channel is currently open and Wade hopes that more activity in the channel will help continue to keep it open, he said. “We do have some new activity that we hope to keep it stirring more, and we welcome more traffic,” Wade said referring to the Oslo Bulk 9.
For economic development purposes, ports survive on federal and state grants, Wade said. “We’re no different. That’s the way we get some funding. That’s the way we can develop. That’s the way we can grow the port,” Wade said.
The port has gotten more than $3 million for the community through grants since 2009 and is committed to bringing funds back to the area, Wade said. The port used a $550,000 port security grant to install two of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Physical Oceanographic Real-time Systems, one by Eugene Island lighthouse and another on the east bank of the Atchafalaya River Bar Channel, he said. “NOAA will be putting the instrumentation on it starting this week. This will be real-time information that will be loaded up to the satellites,” Wade said. The equipment will provide mariners with up-to-date information on currents, temperature, salinity, tides, wave action and winds, he said.
Another critical item for the port is for vessels to report the amount of tonnage they bring through the port, Wade said. “Tonnage is one of the main ways ports get funded, what comes through your port,” Wade said.
“I’ve been complaining for the last several years, and we’ve made this known to our congressional delegation up in Washington, that the oilfield’s being shortchanged,” Wade said. No mechanism exists for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to take the sort of tonnage passing through the Port of Morgan City, including drilling pipe or drilling fluids, and give appropriate credit to the port, he said.
“(Port Economic Development Manager) Cindy Cutrera has worked very, very hard on trying to get this information and trying to work with our congressional delegation,” Wade said.