Louisiana builder is hard at work on R.I.’s offshore wind turbines

By Alex Kuffner, Jun. 13, 2015, Providence Journal

HOUMA, La. — When it comes down to it, there’s not much difference between a foundation for an offshore oil platform and one for an offshore wind turbine. So in 2014, when Deepwater Wind set out to find a company to build the steel structures that would hold up the five huge wind turbines it plans to install off Block Island, it focused its search along the Gulf of Mexico, home to the nation’s offshore oil and gas industry.

Deepwater found what it was looking for in Houma, a small Louisiana city that over the past 80 years has become a gateway to the rich fossil fuel fields off the state’s coast and where a company called Gulf Island Fabrication has built some of the largest offshore platforms in the world. Read the full story in Providence Journal