Acadiana supplied places to sleep offshore

Offshore work needed living space as well as drilling equipment. In its June 2011 analysis of Gulf oil-service businesses, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement described an accommodations industry that built living quarters, supplied modular units, leased accommodation rigs and helped design galleys and sleeping areas.

That was an industrial market with an Acadiana presence. The study’s 2007 location inventory lists Global Maritime Solutions and Stallion Offshore Services in Abbeville, GulfLand Structures and Taylors International Services in Lafayette, and several accommodation suppliers in Broussard. BOEMRE, June 2011, section 3.12 and Table A-12.

The report describes different ways companies served that market. Its researchers identified firms focused on building accommodation modules, while larger businesses combined quarters with other oilfield services. Taylors’ work included the layout and design of galleys and living quarters for onshore and offshore job sites, the report says on page 77.

The same discussion explains why a large company’s sales could not simply be treated as accommodation revenue. Stallion also supplied trucking, equipment rental, remediation and well-site construction. Superior Energy’s rental division contained several subsidiaries, making the division’s Gulf revenue an upper limit rather than a direct measure of accommodation services.

Even the location table needs careful reading. It contains two Stallion Offshore Services entries for Abbeville; one carries an employment figure and the other has blank numerical fields. That is evidence of the study’s records, not proof of two separately founded local companies. Several other suppliers also lack revenue or employment figures.

The useful distinction is between providing homes in a community and outfitting a remote workplace. This federal study documents the latter: companies designed, built or supplied the spaces where crews could live while working offshore. Its 2007 inventory preserves that part of Acadiana’s industrial history without describing today’s housing supply.