Oil field services wary of continued impact of COVID despite five months of job gains

Oil-field services companies, among the industry’s hardest hit during the pandemic, added thousands of jobs in January, the fifth-straight month of gains, as crude prices cruised toward $60 a barrel.

With the addition of 8,421 workers, an increase of 1.4 percent, employment in the sector has increased by about 21,000 jobs over the past five months, according to an analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistic data by the Petroleum Equipment and Services Association. The Houstonbased trade group represents the companies that drill and complete wells and manufacture equipment for the oil and gas industry.

Jobs are returning to the oil patch as crude prices have rebounded in recent months, a boon for a sector that lost almost 102,000 jobs nationally, including 56,200 in Texas, from March to August. Many oil exploration and production companies, which hire oil-field services

firms, stopped drilling new wells and halted production from existing wells last year as demand for crude and petroleum products plunged.

The oil-field services sector employed 625,467 workers in January, 11.5 percent less than the 706,528 it had during the same month in 2020. The jobs lost in 2020 represent annual wages of about $15.4 billion, the trade group said.

As crude prices climbed to about $40 a barrel this summer and above $50 a barrel last month, most oil and gas companies restarted production on existing wells and are completing wells drilled before the pandemic. West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. crude benchmark, settled at $58.24, down 44 cents on Thursday in New York.

The services trade group warned, however, that the recovery remains threatened by the rising number of global coronavirus cases. Demand for oil could tumble again if different strains or new outbreaks force countries to impose new rounds of business and travel restrictions. Meanwhile, the vaccine rollout, which helped spur the rise in crude prices, has remained choppy.