[Alan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by 2B Htown Harry, How do you hedge for j*b and real estate losses when oil hits $25? I suspect things will start getting ugly real soon. My employer has started "selective RIFs." I am in the process of being moved from a cancelled project that needed $70 oil to be viable to an environmentally required project with another client. This will keep me busy until summer. There were 8 process engineers on the original project and 2 were sent into the void. There are rumors that this will be happening a lot across all disciplines as projects are "reorganized." There was a comment made by my process lead that there is a person on the new project that I will be "replacing." I met with the process people for this project and nobody said anything about anyone leaving. I suspect I saw a "dead-man walking" but can't be sure. I was amazed because I found out 2 different projects asked for me when it was known the original project was being cancelled. I have intentionally been a moderate slacker since I started. I'm not particuarly worried about being "force retired." I just don't see what I'd do "retired" in Houston since we can't move or leave for months at a time at this point. DW and I have our house on the market. I was hoping to downsize and become a renter before the crap hit Houston. It's too late for that so we're probably stuck in the oversized money pit for the duration.

My company is downstream from oil so the big drop in oil prices is welcome news, but sales are WAY down and next year's capital investment is down the toilet, even worse than the last 6 months have been. All cost savings and expansion projects are on hold and only essential Safety and Rnvironmental projects are being funded. One of our big 3 production units is coming down in Feb for maintenance and won't be coming back for at least 6 months.

I work in the Project Eng. group and we already have had 5 engineers either leave or retire this last few months and they won't be replaced. No mention of forced redundncies so far but that could change.