The reverberations of the national economic downturn are echoing through Pearland with the planned plant shutdown of Weatherford International at 3810 Magnolia [1].
Pointing to the global economic slowdown and tough times in the energy industry, Weatherford International said last week it would close the Pearland plant and lay off about two-thirds of the 170 employees there.
Weatherford plans to reassign about a third of its workers to other Houston-area Weatherford locations, the company said in an e-mail. The company is expected to cease operations by the end of July.
The news is the talk of the town these days in Pearland, which for the most part has escaped the economic woes that have plagued other U.S. cities.
“The sad thing is we’re just now feeling the effects that most of the country felt late ’08,” said Carol Artz, president of the Pearland Chamber of Commerce.
With a deep collective breath, Pearland businesses are holding their own while hoping that the economy will continue its tenuous upswing, Artz said.
“Our businesses are just trying to hold on for the economy to continue to turn back around,” she said. “It’s started to turn around. We just need it to turn around faster. A lot of the downturn is in the oil and gas industry.”
Perhaps few know that better than Ken Jeter, a mud logger with Weatherford Surface Logging Systems, a division of Weatherford located adjacent to the manufacturing plant on Magnolia.
“It worries me a little bit,” said Jeter, of Alexandria, La. “I know that times are bad. I work for Weatherford, too, and I hope that we’re not next or anything. I’m just concerned.”
Jeter said he hopes a turnaround comes sooner than later.
“I hope so, ‘cause I haven’t seen any improvement yet,” he said. “I work in the oil industry, and it’s slow for all of us still. The economy just hasn’t come around yet.”
Mark Ramirez, a field service engineer at Weatherford Surface Logging Systems, said the news makes him uneasy.
“It worries me,” said Ramirez, who lives in La Porte. “It is worrying some of our guys, because when jobs are down, not all of them get the full-time (hours) that’s needed. They go out for two-week or three-week hitches. There’s not work all the time.”
City Councilman Kevin Cole said news of Weatherford’s Pearland closure is a concern for the city.
“From a tax base standpoint, it does have a potential to have an effect,” Cole said. “For the city has grown quite a bit. While it will have an effect, this type of news would have had even more of an effect a few years ago because Weatherford represented a larger portion of the tax base then.”
He added, “Some of these folks live in Pearland, and it will have an impact on their personal lives. It’s not fun or easy to see anyone go through that. Hopefully these folks can find other employment opportunities. It’s not a good employment time right now.”
For more details about the plant closure, check out Chronicle reporter Monica Hatcher’s story [2].