There were cuts made last year at the New Orleans office that reduced the workforce by about 700 employees. There are about 1600 Shell employees working at One Shell Square now. Oil prices have stabilized around $45, so I don't expect to see many more layoffs in the near future.
They did indeed sign a lease that keeps them at One Shell Square through 2025. The company has stated they plan to keep the deep water operations staff in place here.
I really like this article.
http://www.offshore-mag.com/articles...nt-prices.html
Just 10 years ago, oil was $20/barrel less than today, and there was ample deep water drilling activity going on. In other words, the Gulf will continue to see drilling activity occur at the current price of $45/barrel, and companies should continue to make money. The issue is that it won't be as much profit as seen a few years ago, but should still be in the 7-9% profit margin range. Most companies would kill for that type of profit margin.
In other news, Metro GDP figures for 2015 were released. Real GDP for New Orleans metro increased 2.6% to $68,486,000,000 and was 125th fastest growing economy. Baton Rouge was 17th fastest growing, and grew at a 5.4% rate to $45,631,000,000. Houma was the 2nd worst performing due to the oil slump dropping 7.8% to $10,521,000,000. New Orleans was 44th largest economy in terms of Real GDP, Baton Rouge was 57th largest, and Houma was 181st largest out of 382 total metros.
http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/regi...ewsrelease.htm
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