Oil layoffs hit 100,000 and counting

Business Daily Live ^ | 15 April 2015 | Dan Molinski,

[Lorianne]

LIKE many other oil-field workers, Chris Sabulsky spent years working a schedule known as "14 on, 14 off": two weeks at an oil or gas well somewhere followed by another 14 days at home in East Texas, fishing for bass and crappie.

But now Mr Sabulsky, 48 years old, is spending his days sending out résumés, calling acquaintances to see if they know of job openings, and pondering his future.

His job managing hydraulic-fracturing, or fracking, operations at well sites evaporated in February after the oil-price plunge last year. Fracking, which uses water, chemicals and sand to free oil and gas from shale formations, has been a crucial factor in the US energy boom.

"What we have to do is rebudget ourselves, re-educate ourselves, reinvent ourselves," Mr Sabulsky said by telephone from his home in Tyler, Texas.

Thousands of oil-field workers are in the same shoes or, more accurately, steel-toed boots. Since crude prices began tumbling last year, energy companies have announced plans to lay off more than 100,000 workers around the world. At least 91,000 layoffs have already materialised, with the majority coming in oil-field-services and drilling companies, according to research by Graves & Co, a Houston consulting firm.

Now the cutbacks are slowly showing up in federal employment data.

Direct employment in oil and gas extraction, which had grown by more than 50,000 jobs since 2007, has fallen by about 3,000 jobs since it peaked in October at 201,500, according to the Bureau of Labour Statistics; 12,000 jobs have disappeared from the larger category of energy support since it reached 337,600 jobs in September. And the layoffs are continuing.

[Bibman]

That has been the oilfield history since Spindletop!
The more things change, the more they stay the same!

[Sequoyah101]

It is a familiar way of life in the oilfield. A life full of ups and downs. The man sounds like a self-employed consultant. Most of them are not eligible for unemployment. Virtually on their own for everything.

The oil industry, especially drilling and completions, has a lot of people that are consultants. Self-employed guns for hire. Work hard, play hard, paid in spurts. Great when it is good and horrible when it is bad.

Others are employees...

[Mastador1]

You remember all the responses from the liberal intelligentsia over drill baby drill.......it will never have an effect soon enough to drop prices, and here we are seeing layoffs shortly after we finally do it because the production is greater than the demand.

Not to hijack the thread, but I just heard the same Bolshevik argument be set forth by liberal pundits about desalination plants and the drought in California. And you know they're right again, if we follow their lead again and don't build desalination plants they will never ever effect the drought conditions in California.

[South Dakota]

Oh lord let there be one more oil boom and I promise not .to pi$$ the money. Away this time