Oil town booms and busts drive Andrews to diversify

Andrews

The Andrews Economic Development Corp. (EDC) developed Business Park South, a $295,000, 50-acre business park with existing utilities, including water, sewer, electricity and high-speed data lines, to attract industry to an area long dominated by the oil and gas sector. EDC incentives include:

a half-cent sales tax for economic development;
free land in Business Park South;
tax abatement for up to seven years;
job training programs;
no development fees; and
an expedited permitting process.
Lessons Learned
Oil town’s booms and busts drive Andrews to diversify.

by Clint Shields

In the heart of Texas’ oil and gas country, boom times have returned. Andrews, about 30 miles northeast of Odessa and 30 miles east of the New Mexico border, has lived through the oil booms and picked up the pieces after the busts.

“We had more than 10 years in which our population declined,” says Wesley Burnett, director of economic development for the Andrews Economic Development Corp. (EDC). “When oil is $9 a barrel and it’s 95 percent of your economy, that’s not good.”

Oil and gas prices have surged to record highs over the last four years, bringing oil field workers and a flourishing economy back to Andrews. As oil prices have recently settled to less than $40 a barrel, Andrews’ unemployment rate has risen slightly to around 4 percent. But the EDC has also worked hard at attracting new industry to the area, with an eye on life after the boom.

“Oil and gas has slowed down, but we’ve worked to diversify our industry here so that we’ll be OK until supply and demand brings the price back up,”Burnett says.

Enticing New Industry
Andrews’ population has grown to more than 10,000, with more than 14,000 in the entire county. The city actually experienced a labor shortage as oil and gas prices began their ascent.

“There weren’t as many people here waiting for the rise and it hurt us a little bit not having the work force in place,” Burnett says.

The EDC helped out with job fairs connecting employers with the area’s work force he says.

The EDC offers tax abatements for up to seven years at Business Park South, a 50-acre business park. The two-year-old park has one tenant, Composites One, which distributes plastics and advance composite materials.

“Composites One saw Andrews as a good middle-of-the-road location for moving products to El Paso, Amarillo, Dallas and other cities,” Burnett says.


Enriched uranium fuels U.S. nuclear power plants, and Andrews’ abundance of surrounding land and a skilled disposal company could land future partnerships with eastern New Mexico’s growing uranium enrichment industry.

“[Uranium] enrichment produces a large amount of byproduct,” Burnett says. “Some is waste, but some is made into other products such as refrigerants and silicon chips.”

Waste Control Specialists LLC has been in Andrews since 1995 and employs approximately 120. The company plans to expand to 200 or more as low-level radioactive waste disposal operations increase. The area’s soil is ideal for disposing of personal protective clothing, debris and soils from U.S. nuclear facilities, especially as interest in nuclear-related operations increases, according to Rod Baltzer, Waste Control’s president.

Waste Control’s future openings will be highly skilled, professional jobs, says Baltzer. The company would like to train as many area employees as possible.

“The jobs we can bring in are very high-caliber jobs,” he says. “We’d like to train as many from the available work force as possible. We have a much better chance of retaining them long-term if we can train them there.” TR

For more information on Andrews’ economic development incentives, visit the Andrews Economic Development Corp. online at www.andrewsedc.com.