ChevronTexaco exploration unit leaving New Orleans for Houston

Petroleum News

ChevronTexaco said Dec. 8 that it is moving its deepwater exploration operations to Houston as part of a restructuring that will eliminate 150 to 200 jobs nationwide.

The New Orleans office currently employs 900 people. Company executives say they don’t know how many will be cut from that office as a result of the restructuring. ChevronTexaco’s Deepwater Gulf of Mexico Business Unit, which employs about 300 workers in New Orleans, will be renamed the Deepwater Gulf of Mexico Exploration and Projects Business Unit and relocated to Houston.

However, a local company spokesman told the Houston Chronicle not all of the New Orleans unit’s 300 workers will be transferred to Houston; Employees associated with deepwater production assets in the gulf will stay in New Orleans.

The Chronicle said there are 120 such employees, but “that does not imply that all the remaining 180 will move.” That decision, the ChevronTexaco spokesman said, will be determined later.

The company’s Gulf of Mexico Shelf Business Unit, which employs more than 1,500 workers, will remain in New Orleans, the newspaper reported.

“We will continue to be the number one producer on the Gulf of Mexico shelf,” the company spokesman was quoted as saying.

Earlier this year ExxonMobil said it was closing its New Orleans office and moving it to Houston, eliminating aabout 380 local jobs. Shell Exploration & Production has also said it will move up to 100 geologists and engineers to Houston before the end of this year.