A pair of Houston oilfield service companies are laying off dozens of employees at their operations in Texas.
In separate filings with the Texas Workforce Commission, hydraulic fracturing company Pumpco Energy Services and oilfield equipment maker Stewart and Stevenson announced that they were laying off a combined 60 employees.
Pumpco is closing its office in the Dallas suburb of Cleburne and laying off five people while Stewart and Stevenson is laying off 55 people at its Telge Road facility in Houston.
Matt Woodruff, a spokesperson for Kirby Corp., the parent company of Stewart and Stevenson, said the affected workers built hydraulic fracturing equipment and that the layoffs were due to a lack of orders in that business.
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The announcements come at a time when crude oil prices have been stuck in the $50 per range for most of the past 12 months. Just below the break even price for most oil companies, the lower prices have meant reduced drilling, hydraulic fracturing activity and spending.
Dependent and the budgets of oil and natural gas companies, the oilfield service sector has shed thousands of jobs over the year.
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Wall Street investors have been also calling for the energy sector to become more financially disciplined and pay for their operations from their earnings rather than borrowing new money. That stricter access to capital has also resulted in lower activity in the oil patch and job losses.
There were 152,700 people working for oilfield service companies in the Lone Star State during October, figures from the Texas Workforce Commission show. Those figures were down from 164,000 during October 2018.
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