Energy Industry Slowdown Means Idle Rigs, Cuts in Jobs

John Cromling isn’t jumping out any windows, even though the struggles of the oil and gas industry have idled a large number of Tulsa-based Unit Corp.’s drilling rigs.

That has forced Unit to lay off about 800 employees in Oklahoma.

“That’s really the only thing you can do to cope with the market. The market is what it is,” said Cromling, executive vice president of Unit’s drilling company. “You just have to figure out how to stay alive with it being that.”

He said only about 35 percent of the company’s rigs are working, compared with a 97 percent utilization rate last year.

Cromling acknowledged 2008 was an atypical year, but he estimated Unit’s utilization rate averaged about 80 percent over the past five years.

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