First of all, I must say that I don't want to lose my job any more than the next guy. Chaparral has a responsibility to its employees and should reward their loyalty by cutting contract labor first. This ensures that they don't have to compete to regain their experienced hands back and would also keep hands from migrating to more loyal companies when prices rebound. That being said, layoffs must happen for Chaparral as well as most oil producing companies. This fact is true regardless of the success of the NBU co2 flood. Chaparral also has a responsibility to its investors and must at least minimize the losses in this bad oil economy. I would hope the companies I've invested my 401k in would do the same. Let's stop blaming the NBU co2 flood and start blaming less than $50 oil.
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Stop blaming low oil prices. Low oil prices are not the catalyst for incompetence at the top,but rather exposes the incompetence at the top. P. T. Barnum said it best," A fool and his money are soon parted".
You said it exactly.
They laid off several guys to hire contractors in their position before the oil prices dropped. Explain that..... And if it's necessary to lay off more I vote for them to start trimming fat off of some of the hefty salaries up above.
We have started letting contractors go already, it was a slow trickle in Dec 2014 and Jan 2015 is turning to be a very ugly month for contractors. Employees will be next, there is no doubt about it. SLB and Baker were much faster to move, they started plotting the purge back in Sept/Oct 2014. Not sure what we are doing but I am sure we'll hear about it very soon. Pretty much everyone Upstream will be affected with Oil Services companies withstanding the heaviest hits. It's business. Good luck and Godspeed...