A native of Houma, Mike Nail is “South Louisiana” personified. He loves hunting and goes fishing as often as he can — just 20 minutes down the road at Pointe-aux-Chenes. He’s been working in oil and gas since the 1980s, building a life and career based around the energy industry right here in his backyard. He and his wife Karen are active members of the St. Gregory Catholic Church Parish, where he is also a member of the Knights of Columbus.
In other words, he might be the last guy you’d expect to have grown up speaking a mix of English and Arabic. Or to have been aboard an airplane hijacked by Iranians in 1970. But as the son of a successful oil and gas executive, Mike’s childhood was largely spent overseas. Every year or two, the family relocated to another country — sometimes even another continent — and Mike would be enrolled in the local American school. His family lived in industry hotspots like Tripoli and Benghazi in Libya, Stavanger in Norway, Teheran, Singapore, and Aberdeen, Scotland. It made for an unusual childhood, but it was the only one he knew. His family spent every other summer back home in Houma, so he was able to stay connected to his real “home” and his extended family throughout his childhood.
Mike eventually returned to the States for his senior year of high school. He planned to attend college, but soon found work as a construction rigger. The local economy was booming in the early 1980s, and Mike was in no rush to give up a steady paycheck to go back to school. When the oil industry cratered later in the decade, Mike moved around again: to a machine shop in Houston and a fabrication shop back in Houma with a few stops in between. By the late 1990s he had settled in at Sigma Welders, working on fabrication and offshore projects.
In 2001, he got a call from an old friend, Ricky Lagrange, at Performance Energy Services (PES), asking him to come on board. Over the past two decades-plus, Mike has worked his way up to offshore personnel manager for PES, which was acquired by Danos in 2024. Since then, PES has benefited from an influx of Danos personnel with account management experience. This has in turn allowed PES to offer a wider range of services with greater efficiency to a larger portfolio of clients. He now has 164 people working on different jobs across the Gulf, and he’s expecting to expand to other areas in the coming years.
Mike is optimistic on the future for PES as a Danos company. “The biggest difference I’ve seen is that Danos leadership sincerely cares about our business and our employees,” he said. He shared the story of one of his employees whose home was damaged by Hurricane Francine. Mike helped the employee with an application for assistance from Danos CARES, which he received. Inspired by such unexpected kindness, the employee responded by donating his unused vacation pay to his local church.
Despite his semi-nomadic childhood, or perhaps because of it, Mike doesn’t travel much these days beyond the Gulf South. He’s happy to be right where he is — no passport needed.
PHOTO CAPTION: About that hijacking … this newspaper from the time includes a picture of passengers exiting the plane. The man in a tie front and center, with a jacket slung over his shoulder, is Mike’s father Billy Nail, a regional manager for Dowell Schlumberger. Next to him on the right is Mike’s mother (short hair, wearing heels) and Mike’s older brother. Mike is just barely visible in the photo, behind his brother.