Founder Patrick F. Taylor | Founded 1979 | |
Taylor Energy is an independent American oil company that drills in the Gulf of Mexico based in New Orleans, Louisiana. The company was founded in 1979 by Patrick F. Taylor. Since his death in 2004, his wife Phyllis Taylor has assumed ownership and is the chairman and CEO—making her the wealthiest woman in Louisiana. Taylor has been actively supporting the reconstruction of New Orleans since its destruction during Hurricane Katrina.
The company's founder, Patrick 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 ¹, 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, has agreed to sell all its energy assets to a joint venture between Korea National Oil Corporation and Samsung C&T Corporation.
In 2015 the Associated Press reported that Taylor Energy's well has been leaking oil into the Gulf of Mexico for over a decade, and that they currently hold only one full-time employee.