Department of the Interior, Minerals Management Service, Procurement Operations Branch, MS2500, 381 Elden Street, Herndon, Virginia 20170-4817

B -- DEEPWATER PROGRAM: BENEFITS AND BURDENS OF OCS ACTIVITIES ON SELECTED COMMUNITIES AND PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS SOL 1435-01-98-RP-30899 DUE 071698 POC Jane M. Carlson, Contracting Officer, (703) 787-1364 E-MAIL: Contracting Officer's email, Jane.Carlson@mms.gov. The Department of the Interior, Minerals Management Service (MMS) intends to competitively award a contract to conduct a study entitled Benefits and Burdens of OCS Activities. The oil and gas industry has operated in Louisiana and Texas for nearly 100 years and in offshore waters for over 50 years. Individuals involved in off- and on-shore activities experience such program benefits as full employment and strong benefits packages, but they also place significant stress on public infrastructure and institutions. On-shore effects from recent deepwater developments appear to concentrate in fewer communities than do those from nearer shore activities. Benefits and Burdens of OCS Activities shall assess and compare the effects of OCS activities on selected ports and their surrounding areas and summarize socioeconomic change in the port areas. This study is closely allied to another on-going MMS-sponsored research effort, Testing Regional Economic Impact Assessment Models in the GOM which will: (1) model economic growth for the period 1990-2020; (2) estimate and project population change for the port areas; (3) identify and analyze location-specific factors that are likely to affect economic growth and demographic change; (4) estimate the range of modeling errors by projecting the model forward from 1960 to 1990; and, (5) estimate the range of importance of location-specific factors for future economic growth and demographic change. The MMS believes that both studies will benefit from close cooperation and has designed them to facilitate the sharing of data, analysis, and insights on a regular basis. Benefits and Burdens of OCS Activities has 5 study objectives: (1) to describe and analyze the benefits and burdens that accrue from OCS oil and gas activities to communities, their public institutions, and infrastructures and to describe who benefits, who is burdened, and how; (2) to provide MMS analysts with a detailed baseline description of coastal counties/parishes, Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSA), and port-related labor commuting areas for Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. This baseline should examine the area's current trends and the role that the oil and gas industry plays in those trends; (3) to highlight recent significant changes in the study area, particularly those driven by new interest in deepwater prospects; (4) to provide description and analysis for 7 coastal labor commuting areas that will supplement the ongoing study linked to it; and, (5) to provide recommendations that might be used by local, county/parish, state and Federal governments to mitigate the negative effects of deepwater development and to identify issues relevant to MMS decisionmaking. The study area for this project includes 74 coastal counties/parishes in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. The scope of work for this project is as follows: Task 1.LITERATURE REVIEW: The MMS will provide the Contractor with an annotated bibliography containing over 700 references. The Contractor shall review historical, social and economic literature relevant to the study locals and issues being assessed. The Contractor shall produce a structured annotated bibliography of reviewed references that are not included in the MMS-supplied bibliography or that have been augmented by the Contractor's review. The Contractor shall also gather relevant secondary data pertaining to this project from Federal and State agencies, local planning commissions in the study area, and any other sources the Contractor can identify that are relevant to the analytical tasks in this study. Task 2.DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS: The Contractor shall conduct all primary data gathering activities as specified in its research plan. The research plan will consist of the methodology proposed by the Contractor in its proposal. No field methodologies may be used that require OMB clearance. LEVELS OF ANALYSIS: Study descriptions and analysis shall be developed at three levels of aggregation: county/parish, MSA, and labor market area. Counties/Parishes are a basic descriptive unit for this study. The analysis of some trends, such as demographic, employment and business trends, shall be done at the county/parish level. The study shall address 74 counties including all coastal counties/parishes in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama; (2) all non-coastal counties/parishes included in MSAs that contain a coastal county/parish; and, (3) all non-coastal counties/parishes included in the seven labor market areas defined below. As part of this county/parish-level work, the Contractor shall write short profiles of each county/parish that systematize baseline information, identify and describe significant trends, and highlight recent changes. Each profile shall include: (1) a concise history of the county/parish and of the communities within the county/parish. This history shall cover the period since 1920 to the present with emphasis on the period from 1960 to the present; (2) an overview of the local geography and environment, including a description of the relationships between the environment and local industry and agriculture and a short description of land use patterns, zoning, and Coastal Zone Management (CZM) issues; (3) a description of county/parish populations including their distribution by ethnicity, race, age, gender, income, education, and employment. This description shall note major historic changes (e.g., when and why a particular group began migrating to the area) and identify and analyze past trends and the causes of these trends since 1960; (4) a description of the local economy including its scale and composition. This description shall identify major players in the local economy and pay special attention to the oil and gas industry, businesses related to the oil and gas industry (e.g., oil and gas services, offshore catering) and to enterprises that might have been affected by the offshore industry such as fisheries or tourism. It shall analyze past trends and the causes of these trends since 1960; (5) a description of local infrastructure and institutions such as local government, schools, libraries, water and sewage, roads and highways, medical facilities, transportation, protective agencies such as fire and police, and social agencies that addresses both the physical infrastructure and its use and trends since 1960. It shall pay particular attention to ports and related facilities, and describe ports by ownership, function, cargo, channel depth, and shipping activities. It shall pay particular attention to oil and gas related facilities; and, (6) a description of trends in county/parish revenues and expenditures since 1960, including schooling, protective services, social services, roads, and utilities. This description shall highlight differences in revenue/expenditure structures among counties/parishes and examine possible time-lags between expenditures and revenues. This description shall also examine differential constraints on expenditures among the counties/parishes. MSAs to be addressed include: Beaumont-Port Arthur, TX; Biloxi-Gulfport-Pascagoula, MS; Brownsville-Harlingen, TX; Corpus Christi, TX; Houma, LA; Houston-Galveston-Brazoria, TX; Mobile, AL; and, New Orleans, LA. Profiles of MSAs shall provide (1) a short history of the municipality/metro area, (2) aggregated data from the county/parish descriptions, and (3) summaries of the trend discussions from the county/parish descriptions that, (4) analyze the outcomes of the county/parish-level trends at the MSA level. Labor Market Areas to be addressed include: Corpus Christi, TX (9 counties); Galveston-Texas City, TX (10 counties); Beaumont-Port Arthur, TX (7 counties); Lake Charles, LA (6 parishes); Houma, LA (4 parishes); Pascagoula, MS (7 counties); and, Mobile, AL (8 counties). The Contractor shall profile each of these 7 labor market areas. This profiling shall cover the period since 1920 to the present with emphasis on the period from 1960 to the present. Much of this profiling shall be accomplished by aggregating the information and analysis of historic (1960-1990) demographic, employment, race and ethnicity, economy, fiscal, infrastructure and land use data collected at the county/parish-level. This profiling will also include projections of key trends to 2020. (These projects will be supported by the modeling effort of its companion study). In addition, this description shall pay particular attention to several issues: (1) the description of the port infrastructure and use. The description shall look at ports, and other maritime support facilities as a whole. It shall consider implications of trends, funding, use, and regulatory environment. It shall consider past, present and future use conflicts (e.g., oil industry vs. shrimping or tourism). It shall consider the likely role various facilities might serve in future deepwater OCS developments; (2) the description of the labor market area's involvement with the oil and gas industry (e.g., oil imports), the OCS industry, and the deepwater OCS industry. Involvement in this industry is not uniform, the industry is not homogeneous, nor are measures ofinvolvement completely reliable. This analysis shall be to identify, through case studies, which industries are really oil related, how much they are related, and whether they are related to primary demand from the industry (e.g., exploration or extraction) or secondary (e.g., servicing). Such analysis shall be tied to 4-digit SIC codes; (3) the description of the internal structure of the labor market. The Contractor shall analyze the variations within each labor market area, the disparities among its counties/parishes, and income inequalities. The Contractor shall present data showing where employment by race and ethnicity is a visible pattern. Similarly, the Contractor shall present data showing which segments of the labor force are influenced by oil and gas industries. This analysis shall pursue such questions as, how has OCS-induced employment matched the ethnic mix of population and, if there is a difference, why is there a difference? What is the historic relationship of work and residence in terms ofethnicity and skills? How does oil and gas relate to questions such as wage rates, skills, education (4) analyze the role of boom/bust aspects of the oil industry. This analysis shall look historically at fluctuations in employment, the elements of the economic cycles, their length, where they have occurred, and how they have played themselves out in the labor market areas over time. This analysis shall look historically at fluctuations in employment, population groups employed, the mix of support industry, and at how local populations have adjusted to these fluctuations; (5) analyze interplay between local vs. non-local ownership/control over major economic activities. The study shall evaluate local factors which are in place to control effects of fluctuations in major economic sectors such as CZM, land use planning, zoning, taxes (sales, property, value added), home rule, other state regulations; (6) analyze the benefits and burdens of oil and gas activities. This analysis shall identify where localized effects occur. It shall describe these effects, analyze where these effects are benefits and where they are burdens, and analyze who benefits and who is burdened; and, (7) provide recommendations that might be used by local, state and Federal governments to mitigate the negative effects of deepwater development and to identify issues relevant to MMS decisionmaking. We expect the project team to have experience in management of complex projects, familiarity with multi-method approaches to research (e.g., triangulation), secondary and archival research, non-structured interviewing techniques, demography, economics, labor economics, socioeconomic assessment, statistics, and familiarity with port operations and/or port-related socioeconomic issues. HOW TO RESPOND: In order to compete for this contract, interested parties MUST demonstrate that they are qualified to perform the work by providing, BY FOUR O'CLOCK EASTERN TIME ON JULY 16, 1998. Offerors are to provide a Capabilities Statement that shall detail: (1) your key personnel (those who would have primary responsibility for performing and/or managing the study) with their qualifications and specific experience; (2) an explanation of what task(s) key personnel will perform and a rationale including how the individual's training and experience meets the requirements of the task(s); (3) your organization's experience wit this type of work and a description of your facilities; and (4) specific references (including project identifier & description, period of performance, dollar amount, client name and telephone number) for previous work of this nature that your personnel or organization is currently performing or has completed within the last two years (REFERENCES WILL BE CHECKED). Offerors shall submit their Capabilities Statement in original and two copies to Jane Carlson, Contracting Officer at Minerals Management Service, 381 Elden Street, MS 2500, Herndon, Virginia 20170-4817. Four additional copies shall be submitted to Dr. Harry Luton, Gulf of Mexico Region,1201 Elmwood Park Blvd., MS-5430, New Orleans, LA 70123-2394. Timeliness of receipt of any submission will be determined by the time received in the Procurement Operations Branch, Herndon, Virginia. The period of performance for the resultant contract will be forty (40) months with an estimated dollar range of $625,000 to $650,000. Your Capabilities Statement will be evaluated based on (1) currency, quality and depth of experience of individual personnel in working on similar project ("Similar Project" is meant to convey similarity in topic, methodologies, dollar value, duration, and complexity); (2) quality and depth of education, experience on other projects which may not be similar enough to include in response to (1), but may be relevant, and publication history; (3) organization's history of successful completion of projects; history of producing high-quality reports and other deliverables; history of staying on schedule and within budget. Included here is consideration of the proposed relationship between the offeror and relevant stat agencies. Following review of all Capabilities Statements, a list of those deemed most qualified to perform the work will be established and those firms will be notified and provided additional proposal instructions and contract requirements. Proposals will essentially consist of an oral technical presentation, written technical summary, program management plan, and cost/business proposal. Questions should be faxed to (703) 787-1364 or Emailed as soon as possible to Jane.Carlson@mms.gov and should include the RFP number, your full name, address, phone and fax nos. Request or questions by telephone are strongly discouraged. (0174)

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