Jim Bob Moffett, a cute boy from an oil field owned by Freeport-McMoRan Inc. built a Fortune 500 business in New Orleans in the 1980s and 1990s and which acted as a powerhouse in local civil and business affairs, died in COVID-19 on Friday. Austin, Texas, his son said. He was 82 and had been ill for several years.
“He was bigger than life,” said Darryl Berger, a major real estate investor and citizen leader in New Orleans.
Jim Bob Moffett in 1990. (Photo by Ellis Lucia, The Times-Picayune)
A geologist with a master’s degree from Tulane University, who could get little sleep, Moffett uses his powerful personality, willingness to take big risks and to lead a deep understanding of the oil, gas and minerals business to ‘ to lead a company that in 1988 found the world’s largest gold mine and one of the largest copper mines in Indonesia. He was a major philanthropist in New Orleans and Austin, and also a regular target of attorneys in the area in Louisiana, Texas and Indonesia.
In New Orleans, Moffett, who grew up poor in Texas, shook up the sloppy ways of doing business in a city where the company’s executives tended to get out of the old Carnival crabs and social clubs. He founded the Business Council in the mid-1980s to present political views on political issues of the day to political leaders in a more powerful way.
“Jim Bob was absolutely the most respected and well-known person in the last five decades to make a difference in business,” said Bill Goldring, a liquor magnate and philanthropist in New Orleans, whose father, Stephen, helped Moffett to establish the Business Council. “He was powerful with a can-do attitude and never said something could not be done. He pushes the limits on everything he has touched. He was in your face when he knew something was right and needed to be done. He will keep pushing to make it happen. ”
Moffett explained his philosophy on business – and indeed life – in an interview in 1995: “If I walked into a conference room with lawyers and accountants, they would say to me, ‘You know, no one has done this before.’ , ‘he said. said. “It’s not a show stop for me. This should not be a show stop.
‘As long as you’re convinced you’re right about things, you should feel comfortable enough, even if you’re talking about some big and big things. … If you believe in what you’re doing and if you know that you can do things that other people cannot do and if you’re confident enough to go down a new path, it’s really creating assets that are different. is. ”
James Robert Moffett was born in Houma in 1938 and lived in Golden Meadow until he was 5, when his father disappeared and his mother moved him and his sister to Houston. Moffett earned a scholarship to play football and study geology at the University of Texas, but found that his studies limited his ability to play ball. Yet he became a favorite of the legendary Longhorns coach Darrell Royal, for whom he played suit.
The Freeport-McMoRan building in Poydras St. 1615 in New Orleans is shown in 2004. (Photo by Matt Rose, The Times-Picayune)
After that, Moffett returned to Louisiana and learned the ropes by working for an independent oil and gas company. In 1969, he co-founded McMoRan with Ken McWilliams and BM Rankin. Moffett was the architect of a 1981 merger with Freeport Minerals, a larger company in New York City, and insisted that the joint venture locate in the New Orleans area, which was closer to the oil fields.
In 1984, at a time when large oil and gas companies still had a large presence in New Orleans, Moffett moved Metairie’s headquarters to a new office tower in Poydras St. 1615, opposite the Superdome, moved. The building bore the name Freeport-McMoRan for more than three decades.
Freeport-McMoRan remained in New Orleans until 2007 when a merger led to the company’s relocation to Phoenix. Moffett served as chairman in 2015. Some of his investment bets had not yet borne fruit by then.
Moffett was particularly active in New Orleans when Sidney Barthelemy was mayor from 1986 to 1994. Barthelemy believed that Moffett was a more willing partner than most other businessmen, at a time when a sharp drop in oil prices was hurting New Orleans’ economy. and destroyed City Hall’s. finance. He agreed to support a refinancing of bonds that would provide the city with $ 35 million to pay for roadworks, parks and libraries.
Jim Bob Moffett to Retire as Freeport-McMoRan Chairman
“He was a really good, good person and willing to help,” Barthelemy said. “He was a great asset to the city.”
Moffett has donated millions of dollars to Freeport for libraries, parks, children’s summer programs, the New Orleans Opera and the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, said Cindy Molyneux, who co-founded the company.
“He was a giant man for the city of New Orleans and the state of Louisiana,” said Ron Forman, president and CEO of the Audubon Nature Institute. The institute operates the Audubon Freeport-McMoRan Species Survival Center in Algiers lower coast, where endangered species can breed. Freeport sowed the project with $ 10 million.
Not all of Moffett’s efforts in Louisiana succeeded. One major attempt was to overhaul the state’s tax legislation, which he and his supporters, including the then government, were overhauling. Buddy Roemer, called ‘fiscal reform’. Louisiana voters rejected the measure after opponents said it would increase taxes on individuals.
A day after Roemer lost the 1991 gubernatorial election – and former Gov. Edwin Edwards and white supremacist David Duke advanced to the run-up – Moffett called Edwards to pledge support and tackle businessmen behind him.
Moffett has repeatedly complained to environmental advocates that he turned over cloths for enterprise projects that poisoned the water and the soil.
A pile of drywall is seen at the Mosaic Uncle Sam fertilizer plant in St. Louis. James Parish on February 6, 2019. (Brett Duke, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
Freeport Chemicals, for example, in the late 1980s wanted two giant stacks of radioactive gypsum waste in the St. James Parish crashed into the Mississippi River, but government officials stopped the company. The stacks, now owned by Mosaic Fertilizer, have contaminated groundwater, said Wilma Subra, technical adviser to the Louisiana Environmental Action Network.
“It’s a legacy that will be there forever and ever,” Subra said.
Freeport also criticized the fact that its giant mine in Indonesia polluted the ground and that the company, in collaboration with the Indonesian government, its business partner, tortured and killed indigenous opponents of the massive project. The company denied the allegations.
Moffett is survived by his wife, Lauree Moffett of Austin; children James “Bubba” Moffett Jr. of Phoenix and New Orleans, Crystal Moffett Lourd of Los Angeles, Jordan Moffett of Austin and Corrine Moffett of Austin; and six grandchildren.
“He was my hero,” said Bubba Moffett, president of Crescent Crown Distributing, a beer and beverage distributor in Southern Louisiana and Phoenix.
As a young man, Moffett became a big fan of Elvis Presley. During occasional performances by Hot Rod Lincoln, a local group that included Berger and other businessmen, he would wear Elvis clothing – the white suit, the long scarves, the big sunglasses – and jump on stage for a few Presley numbers to sing, usually ‘Blue’ Suede Shoes “and” Hound Dog. “
“He was a real showman, and he was pretty good at it,” Berger said.
Moffett liked to note that he was born on the same date, August 16, that Presley died in 1977.
He died at Seton Hospital in Austin while listening to Presley’s songs.