Industrialinfo.com Identifies 31 New Plants in the Southwest and Gulf Coast U.S. Regions That Came Online During the First Half of 2003

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Researched by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources, Incorporated; Houston, Texas). Since June, Industrialinfo.com has identified an additional eleven new plants, which have become operational, bringing the total to 31 new plants identified and added to Southwest and Gulf Coast regions of the North American Plant Database so far this year. Although, this number has declined from last year with a total of 46 new plants in the same time period, it's still encouraging to see continued strength in a region that is considered so important to the overall health of the oil and gas industry plus others.

Eleven of these new plants were power plant startups continuing a trend of new generation growth and Private Energy Producer's (PEP) taking advantage of deregulated markets. Very appropriately, all but one of these new plants uses natural gas as the primary fuel with the other using waste as its feedstock. The Oil & Gas transmission industry maintains second place as it had earlier this year with a total of seven new plants.

In total, the 31 new plants represent over 3,000 new jobs, which comes at a time when unemployment is very high both regionally and nationally. This number might seem large but considering that in 2002 the number of plants that actually closed or ceased production in these regions totaled just over 120 and represented over 19,000 jobs. "We are going to have to see some dramatic changes in core areas such as the cost of energy including natural gas and other feedstock before we see the number of grassroot plant startups increase significantly," commented Trey Hamblet, Chemicals Group Manager with Industrialinfo.com.

Click the image to the right to view a list of the new plants identified.

Each of these new plants is listed in one of Industrialinfo.com's Online Plant Directories. Industrialinfo.com provides access to thousands of industrial process plants and management contacts for each through an online tool that is updated monthly. The Online Plant Directories offer each user access to buying decision makers, physical plant address, phone and fax numbers, employee count and much more. Each plant has easy to use driving instructions and color maps.