Lake Charles Employers

CITGO Petroleum Corporation is one of Lake Charles’ largest employers with a local workforce of more than 1,500. CITGO’s Lake Charles manufacturing complex was built in 1944 and today is the sixth-largest refining facility in the U.S. The energy giant operates the facility on 2,000 acres with docks that line the Calcasieu Ship Channel and a refining capacity of 425,000 barrels per day.

Era Helicopters, a well-established leader in the aerospace industry, employs more than 850 at its operational headquarters located at the Lake Charles Regional Airport. The company is a key provider of services to other top area companies, focusing primarily on the safe and efficient transport of personnel to and from offshore energy production operations located in the Gulf of Mexico.

Lake Charles Memorial Hospital, part of the Lake Charles Memorial Health System, is the not-for-profit system’s main campus that is one of the region’s top employers with a local workforce of approximately 1,500 employees. The hospital, fully licensed and accredited by the Joint Commission, operates a family medicine residency program for Louisiana State University medical school students as well as an innovative, hands-on training program for area high school students interested in a career in health care.

Sasol North America, part of the South African energy giant Sasol Limited, announced in December 2012 the largest manufacturing project in the history of Louisiana, an integrated gas-to-liquids (GTL) and ethane cracker with an estimated capital investment of $19-to-22 billion. With a local workforce already numbering more than 600 and the company’s ethane cracker complex scheduled to be complete in 2017, Sasol’s investment in the Lake Charles area is expected to create a total of more than 7,000 direct and indirect jobs to support operations that will convert natural gas into diesel and produce 1.5 million tons of ethylene annually.

Westlake Chemical is an international petrochemical manufacturer and pipe fabricator with production facilities located across North America and Asia. Founded in the 1980s in Lake Charles, Westlake’s Southwest Louisiana manufacturing facility is a top producer of ethylene, styrene and polyethylene and maintains an area workforce of approximately 650 employees.