Flint Hills closing

Odessa officials aren't going to take the news of the closing of Flint Hills Resources' Odessa petrochemical plant lying down.

"We're going to start one of the biggest marketing campaigns you've ever seen," Gary Vest, economic development director for the Odessa Chamber of Commerce, said Thursday. "We're going to try to find a use for that facility."

Flint Hills, a division of Koch Industries, informed the plant's 395 employees of the shutdown Wednesday. The 51-year-old facility is slated to close in the first half of 2009.

Vest said he'd like to find a buyer for the plant despite Flint Hills' statements that it is being closed because reviews determined it's not worth investing the millions of dollars required to keep it competitive in a global environment.

Vest plans to meet with Flint Hills officials upon returning from an economic development conference in Amarillo. He said he's open to having the site broken up into smaller, separate plants or redeveloped entirely.

But, whatever happens, Vest wants to do it soon.

"The longer the facility sits there, the harder it's going to be to get something out of it," he said.

With Odessa's unemployment rate among the lowest in Texas, and the local economy still seeing benefits from the oil boom of recent years, Vest said many of the workers should be able to move into jobs elsewhere in the community.

"I think it may be the best time in our history for it to happen," Vest said. "But that doesn't mean we like it."

To help the Flint Hills workers find jobs, Willie Taylor, executive director of Workforce Solutions Permian Basin, said his agency could start a "rapid response team" that will work with employers to find them jobs in its 17-county region. The team helps the unemployed look for jobs with services, including help with resumes.

"We do everything we can to make sure they aren't drawing unemployment benefits," Taylor said. "We want to get them back to work as soon as possible."

In September, the most recent month when statistics are available, Odessa had a 3.8 percent unemployment rate, which trailed only Midland at 3.2 percent among Texas cities.

"Since we've been running such low unemployment numbers recently, we do have available jobs to integrate them into our workforce," he said.

Taylor is hopeful Flint Hills will offer many of its workers jobs in its other facilities in the state to bring the number of people laid off in Odessa to around 200 people, something he considers more manageable.

Still, this is a different situation than when Huntsman, the former operator of the plant, laid off nearly 240 of its then-700 employees in 2001, Taylor said.

"When you talk plant closings, you're really talking higher-end type jobs, which make it a little more difficult (to fill)," he said.

Though oil prices have dropped from $147 a barrel in July to $61 Thursday, Ben Shepperd, executive director of the Permian Basin Petroleum Association, said there are still good jobs available in the oil and gas industry.

"Six weeks ago, there was a dramatic shortage, companies were scrambling to attract and retain workers," he said. "They are not quite as desperate as they were, but I think there is still a strong, vibrant economy."

Shepperd said there are openings for everyone from truck drivers to mechanical and technical workers.  He advises those interested in jobs to make contact with people they know in the industry, or they can simply walk into a company and introduce themselves.

Others are calling the closure of the plant a "mixed blessing."

Neil Carman, a former inspector with the state's environmental regulatory agency who now works with the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club, inspected the plant for years and determined it had high levels of benzene, which he said can lead to cancer.

"I hate to see people lose their jobs," he said. "They're doing a lot to reduce emissions, but the air will be a lot cleaner in Odessa."

Carman remembers smelling odor from the plant when he lived near the intersection of 42nd Street and Andrews Highway.

"People there were so used to the rotten-egg smell of the oil patch, they didn't think anything about it," he said. "I knew what I was smelling, and I knew where it was coming from."

Vest said news of the shutdown took him by surprise Wednesday. But he plans to make dealing with it a priority.

"We'll just hit the ground running," he said. "This is the time for our economic development department to do its job, and we're going to."