2004-07-01

Center for Public History, University of Houston; University of Houston Libraries, University of Houston

This is an oral history interview with Vince Guzzetta conducted as part of the Houston History Project. Vince Guzzetta was born in Berwick, Louisiana in 1936, a small town across the Atchafalaya Bay from Morgan City. After three years at Louisiana State University, he and his father, Vincent Sr., started a seafood business in Berwick called Deep South Seafoods. He was hired to pick shrimp.  The company also received packaged, processed, and froze imported Mexican shrimp and put them in Deep South's freezers to send all over the United States. In the mid-1960's, when the oil companies moved to Morgan City in large numbers, Guzzetta and his father converted their seafood business into an oil field service company and renamed it Guzzetta Offshore.  In general, they took seismic crews out and carried mud and pipe and other supplies to offshore rigs. They worked in Bahrain and the Middle East, South Africa, Nicaragua, Colombia, Panama, Venezuela, and other sites in the Gulf of Mexico. The company dealt with Geophysical, Pennzoil, Texaco, Conoco, and others.  A Guzzetta and GSI crew were seized in Somalia, causing Mr. Guzzetta to deal with the State Department, Rome and the Somalian government.  The Guzzettas also owned Guzzetta Oil (distributorship for Conoco) and owned seven gas stations in Morgan City area.  They phased out of both Guzzetta offshore and oil in 1990. Interviewer: Jamie Christy.

interviews

Energy development; Petroleum industry and trade; Guzzetta, Vince

Morgan City, Louisiana

Oral Histories from the Houston History Project

University of Houston Libraries Special Collections

English

Collection
University of Houston Libraries Special Collections
Houston History Archives
Oral Histories from the Houston History Project

Preservation Location: ark:/84475/pm03074v17c