supplies staging areas. Rental tool and well servicing 

 companies need office space and small storage areas. Yards 

 are needed to store pipe and steel to be used offshore. The 

 producing companies require a dockside location as a produc- 

 tion force headquarters consisting of accountants, engineers, 

 radio dispatchers, and other operators who control the movement 

 of men and supplies to and from work areas . The headquarters also 

 requires crew boat docking facilities and heliports (U.S. Depart- 

 ment of the Interior , 1973; U.S.D.I., 1976c). The ports and 

 waterways used by offshore operators in Louisiana are shown 

 in Figure 1.9. In addition, another port, Port Fourchon, 

 is being developed at the mouth of Bayou Lafourche (south 

 of Leeville) , and at least some of the aforementioned 

 service facilities are expected to develop around it 

 (Mumphrey et al . , 1976: 258-262). 



Airports and heliports constitute another major type of 

 onshore support facility, the more significant of which are 

 heliports. Because of the intensity of OCS activity in the 

 Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana is the site of the most extensive 

 helicopter operations in the world. Their main functions 

 include (1) transporting oil rig crews to and from the 

 drilling platforms and associated facilities of offshore fields; 



(2) transporting emergency parts and service personnel; and 



(3) performing pipeline patrol and oil spill control tasks. 

 The three largest operators, Petroleum Helicopters, Inc., Air 

 Logistics, and Air Marine, operate a total of over 200 

 helicopters in Louisiana (Airways Engineering Corporation, 



27 



