BATON ROUGE, La. (BRPROUD) – Gov. John Bel Edwards announced potential investment by Exxon Mobil totaling more than $240 million at the company’s Baton Rouge refinery.
The suite of projects would improve processing capability, increase flexibility for meeting market demand, advance overall site competitiveness, and install technology for a voluntarily 10 percent reduction of volatile organic compound emissions.
“The projects would retain 1,300 existing jobs at the refinery, and If this project goes forward, it will create over 600 construction jobs for each of the next three years” said Exxon Mobil’s Refinery Manager, Gloria Moncada.
The investment also would provide more than 20 full-time job opportunities for graduates of the north baton rouge industrial training initiative, a collaborative program spearheaded by Exxon Mobil in 2012 to provide no-cost, fast-tracked industrial craft training for community residents.
“Going into 2021 as the economy recovers these types of announcements and investments are very important to helping s recover and get back to where we were pre-pandemic” said Baton Rouge Area Chamber’s Vice President of Business and Development, Russell Richardson.
To secure the investment, Louisiana economic development has offered Exxon Mobil the comprehensive workforce solutions of led fast start, ranked the no. 1 state workforce training program in the U.S. for the past 11 years. the company also is expected to utilize the state’s offer of the industrial tax exemption program.
The projects are pending final engineering, design and investment decisions. a decision to proceed could come from Exxon Mobil in 2021.