Community Chat

[Marmalade_1]

NEW YORK (MainStreet) — Plunging oil prices has pushed major oil and gas producers to curtail their projects and slash their budgets, which means thousands of jobs are at risk.

The rapid decline in oil prices have served as a boon to consumers who are saving money each month, but extremely low prices will affect the 9 million Americans who owe their livelihoods to the energy industry among the 32 states which produce commercial quantities of oil and natural gas.

The dramatic drop in oil prices isn’t all good news for the American economy, said Bernard Weinstein, associate director of the Maguire Energy Institute at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. A conservative estimate is that about 33% of the oil and gas extraction jobs, or 65,000 positions, will vanish during 2015. Other industries such as oilfield service companies, manufacturers of drilling equipment and transportation services related to oil and gas extraction will also be hit, although estimates for those jobs are harder to determine, he said. Companies such as Halliburton, Schlumberger and Baker Hughes have already announced huge layoffs, although most of them are likely to be outside the U.S.

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Although Texas, Alaska and North Dakota are the largest producers of hydrocarbons, 29 other states also produce commercial amounts of oil and natural gas.

“The geographic impacts of the downturn in the industry will be felt nationally,” Weinstein said. “For example, the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania and West Virginia is now the nation’s number one producer of natural gas—both dry gas and natural gas liquids such as ethane and propane.”

http://www.mainstreet.com/article/plummeting-gasoline-prices-will-eliminate-thousands-of-jobs-in-ma...

[esmeraldagooch]

That's why OPEC did it. If you think we will have it bad look at what its doing to Putin.

[Qwackertoo]

This has happened many times over in the oil industry.

What goes up, must come down.

What goes down, WILL go back up.

Guaranteed.

Only way it won't, is IF someone invents a way turn turn water into fuel.

[croemer]

On 2/4/2015 esmeraldagooch said: That's why OPEC did it. If you think we will have it bad look at what its doing to Putin.

Yep

[gardenman]

I've long advocated a big company taking oil out of the commodity market and just selling it at cost with a small profit added in. A company like Walmart could lease their own wells, build a refinery and distribution system and remove the volatility from pricing. They'd have known set costs and could keep their prices at the same level pretty much all of the time. Oil companies make pretty much the same money no matter the sticker price, but the speculators are the ones who make (and sometimes lose) the big money buying and selling futures. The price of commodities has little to do with how much it costs to get it and more to do with how much the speculators are willing to bid up the price. If the Saudis or others decided to drop the price way down then Walmart (or whoever) could buy it on the open market as long as it cost less to buy it then extract it themselves, but then when the price rose again they could just restart their operations and hold prices in check.

Take away the market volatility and make the price of oil solely related to what it costs to find/produce/distribute it and let the speculators move on to other items. Those companies that excel at finding, producing and distributing can find a huge market advantage as they can undercut the price of those companies not as efficient.

[croemer]

Interesting concept gardenman...never thought of that.

[Lipstickdiva]

Our gas went up 30 cents a gallon yesterday.

[brii]

Gas was down to $1.99. Now I noticed it was back up to $2.19 and $2.29.

It's still low, but I guess it's going back up now.

[Marmalade_1]

The prices stay down just long enough to tease us and then back up they go. It's nothing short of thievery!

[croemer]

On 2/4/2015 Marmalade said:

The prices stay down just long enough to tease us and then back up they go. It's nothing short of thievery!

Just when we were catching a break.