Halliburton lays off 178 atGrandJunctionsite

Halliburton Energy Services let go of 178 workers at its Grand Junction facility on Monday, part of a larger layoff it made across the region.

“The layoff is expected to be a permanent employment loss. At this time it is expected that the facility will remain open,” Justin Slaugh, the company’s district manager for the Rock Springs District, wrote the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment.

Slaugh submitted the letter under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, on Oct. 7, the same day the job cuts were made.

The cuts in Grand Junction were part of a larger reduction of 650 oil field workers in Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico and North Dakota, said Halliburton spokeswoman Erin Fuchs.

“Halliburton made reductions to its employee workforce in Colorado due to local market conditions. Making this decision was not easy, nor taken lightly, but unfortunately, it was necessary as we work to align our operations to reduced customer activity,” she said in an email.

Fuchs said the majority of the people let go were offered the chance to find work in more active areas where Halliburton operated.

The number of drilling rigs operating in Colorado has fallen from 32 a year ago to 24 this month, according to counts from Energent Group. Of those two dozen rigs, the vast majority, 20, are operating in the D-J Basin northeast of Denver.

Colorado’s Piceance Basin has only three rigs active, and they are all operating in Garfield County. Mesa County, where the cuts happened, hasn’t had an active rig since February, said Bernadette Johnson, vice president of strategic analytics at Enverus.

“It has everything to do with low gas prices overall, and even lower Rockies gas prices. The layoffs are not a surprise. Minimal activity means less need for oil field services,” she said.

Reserves in that part of Colorado are more gas-rich in a market that has favored oil production for nearly a decade. Weld County now accounts for about 90% of the state’s petroleum production.

Given the state’s tight 2.8% unemployment rate, some energy service firms have been hesitant to let go of employees, for fear that they won’t be able to get them back if drilling activity picks up.