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Friday, June 18, 2010 – Daily News – 7A Oil rig workers forced to job hunt after drill ban MORGAN CITY, La. (AP) — Mr. Charlie has seen the up and downs over the years in the oil patch off Louisiana’s coast, but this could be the toughest slump of all. Earlier this week, the steel rig stationed on the Atchafalaya River graduated what could be one of its last classes of workers prepping for the rigors of off- shore life. President Barack Obama’s six-month moratorium on deep- water drilling in the Gulf has sent shudders across the coast’s offshore oil industry — where no one knows just how exten- sive or long-lasting the damage to jobs may be. Louisiana has long been indebted to the oil industry. Its thousands of good-paying jobs — offshore workers frequently earn $50,000 a year or more — counterbalance the low-wage tourism industry in the state’s southern tier of parishes. But that changed — at least temporarily — after the oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, spewing the black gold into the waters. Now, many of those who counted on making it in the oil patch are out stumping for jobs. Rodney Phillips, a 38-year- old heavy equipment operator from Angie, La., was in a nine- day class when the moratorium was declared. His father made a good living from 20 years of offshore work with Texaco. With the likelihood of quick offshore employment fading, Phillips was headed to the south Louisiana cities of Venice and Grand Isle in his Chevy truck in search of a job on one of the boats being hired to work the BP spill. ‘‘There’s jobs doing every- thing down there right now: Crewboats, tug boats, heavy equipment. Whatever best offer I get is where I will start off,’’ he said. Virgil Allen, a safety special- ist who manages Mr. Charlie, owned by the International Petroleum Museum and Exposi- tion in Morgan City, said one more training class was sched- uled this week. ‘‘The moratorium is stopping all the regular training,’’ said Allen. The training rig, he said, is being turned into a clearing- house for workers looking for oil spill response jobs, like the one Phillips hopes to get. BP this week agreed to estab- lish a $100 million fund to sup- port oil rig workers idled by the six-month moratorium, separate from $20 billion it is setting aside for Gulf damages at the White House’s insistence. No details have been released yet of how the rig worker money will be paid out. The administration also was to ask Congress for special unemployment insur- ance for the workers. Still, almost no one is happy about the moratorium. ‘‘Bringing drilling to a screeching halt will deal another blow to Louisiana workers and businesses that are already reel- ing from the impact of the oil disaster,’’ said U.S. Rep. Charlie Melancon, D-La. In the angst over drilling, perhaps no place in Louisiana will feel the economic ripple effects of the moratorium greater than Mr. Charlie, a land- mark in the heart of Louisiana’s offshore history. The brainchild of Marksville, La., marine engineer Alden J. ‘‘Doc’’ Laborde, Mr. Charlie was the first U.S. submersible rig to drill for oil. On its first outing for the Shell Oil Co. in 1954, the rig struck oil in a well near the South Pass of the Mis- sissippi River, not far from the blown-out BP-operated well. ‘‘Shell Oil’s South Pass 27 discovery loudly announced the arrival of offshore Louisiana as a major new producing area,’’ writes Tyler Priest in ‘‘The Off- shore Imperative,’’ a history of Shell’s oil and gas exploration. Priest is a historian at the Bauer College of Business at the Uni- versity of Houston. Mr. Charlie — a steel plat- form stuck on a submersible barge — cut quite a figure by 1950s standards and was cele- brated with galas and a Life magazine article that called it a ‘‘singularly monstrous contrap- tion.’’ After its retirement in 1984, it was anchored at Morgan City, a sleepy oil town of 12,000 where the offshore industry got its start in 1947. In short order the Mr. Charlie was turned into a training center for divers, grips, cooks and riggers looking for work in the Gulf. It’s been a great success. Until the Deepwater Horizon disaster, workers attracted by the offshore boom came from around the world for training. Mr. Charlie has the feel of a well-worn, stately ship. ‘‘The workers have to live on offshore time: They sleep here, eat their meals here. It’s all done just like they’ll find it offshore,’’ said Allen on the narrow stair- case to the Mr. Charlie’s modu- lar living quarters. The last group to go through was a boisterous group of about 20 unemployed or semi- employed workers taking part in a state Labor Department retraining program. Over a recent weekend, they sweated in the Louisiana sun as they got in and out of haz-mat suits and got drilled in basic rig- ging techniques, such as putting a pipe together. ‘‘I need to pay my bills,’’ said Rodney Hebert, who said he was between jobs. Despite the temporary down- turn in Louisiana’s oil industry, the Mr. Charlie will likely sur- vive. When classes aren’t in, it still stays open as a museum. And after all, no one really expects the oil patch to ever rock like it did in the 1950s when company towns and wealth poured into the backwa- ters of Louisiana. ‘‘The second largest helipad in the world was in Morgan City,’’ Allen said. ‘‘The other was Di An, Vietnam.’’ Firm: California median home price rises in month LOS ANGELES (AP) — The median home price in California last month surged 20.9 percent from May 2009 to $278,000, as inventories of low-cost foreclosures dwindled and transactions in mid-range and high-end neighborhoods claimed a greater share of sales, a tracking firm reported Thursday. Last month’s median was up from $230,000 a year ago and up 9 percent from $255,000 in April, San Diego-based MDA DataQuick said. The May median, which marked a seventh consecutive The Back Packs ARE HERE! The Back Packs ARE HERE! Look for them at local businesses month of year-over-year increases, was at its high- est level since October 2008. DataQuick President John Walsh said some of the higher-priced homes were reaching the market because of increasing eco- nomic troubles among middle- and upper-class families, who are com- pelled to sell. But he said low mort- gage rates and the now- Pick a Rib with Us Daily Specials Jack the Ribber All you can eat ribs $ Friday Night Rib Dinners 1400 1150 Monroe St. 527-6108 House – Apartment FOR RENT Classified Line Ads June Special! 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For more information or to convert or extend your subscription, call expiring federal tax credit for home buyers also had helped boost the propor- tion of more expensive homes within the sales mix. ‘‘For now, at least, we’re seeing a more nor- mal mix of sales across the region and across price categories,’’ Walsh said. Sales of homes costing $500,000 or more made up 21.2 percent of all transactions in the state last month, up from 16.5 Get your percent a year ago, DataQuick said. In a nine-county region of Northern California, sales rose 11 percent to 8,264 in May from a year earlier. In the six-county region of Southern Cali- fornia, sales increased 7.2 percent to 22,720 from May 2009 . The median home price in Northern California jumped 20.1 percent to $410,000 last month from $341,500 in April 2009. In Southern California, the median price surged 22.5 percent to $305,000, up from $249,000 in the year-ago period. home-delivered subscription to Convert your Daily News COUPON COUPON Golden Ticket