Taylor Energy


Taylor Energy was an independent American oil company that drilled in the Gulf of Mexico and was based in New Orleans, Louisiana. The company was founded in 1979 by Patrick F. Taylor. Following his death in 2004, his wife Phyllis Taylor assumed ownership and became the chairman and CEO—making her the wealthiest woman in Louisiana. Taylor actively supported the reconstruction of New Orleans after its destruction during Hurricane Katrina.

Patrick F. Taylor

The company's founder, Patrick F. Taylor, grew up in Beaumont, Texas, was kicked out of his home by his father, and attended Louisiana State University under a free tuition program. He married Phyllis Miller in 1965, who had grown up in Abbeville, Louisiana, and had been one of the first women to graduate from Tulane Law School.
After achieving success, Taylor became a champion for free college education. He achieved some press in 1988 for promising a group of 183 middle school students that he would provide for their college education if they could maintain their grades; the follow-through was later covered on 60 Minutes.
He would also join with Texas State Senator Royce West in 1998 to form what is now known as the TEXAS Grant program, which pays for college tuition and fees for students from low and middle-income families.
Circa February 1, 2008, Taylor Energy Company, one of the largest privately owned oil and gas companies operating in the Gulf of Mexico, agreed to sell all its energy assets to a joint venture between Korea National Oil Corporation and Samsung C&T Corporation.

2004 Taylor oil spill

In 2015 the Associated Press reported that Taylor Energy's well has been leaking oil into the Gulf of Mexico since Hurricane Ivan struck the Gulf of Mexico off of Louisiana in 2004, and that Taylor Energy currently has only one full-time employee. By October 2018, the continuing spill was approaching the level of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the largest marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry.