More than two hundred workers in the area are going through interviews, to find out if they can keep their jobs. That’s after Oklahoma-based WPX Energy decided to sell to a new Texas company.
WPX announced earlier this week that most of its Colorado assets are being sold to Terra Energy Partners in Houston. WPX spokesperson Kelly Swan says it’s too soon to tell how many workers in its Parachute office will keep their jobs. “They are directly responsible for managing, maintaining, and operating more than 4700 natural gas wells out on the Western Slope,” he said Tuesday. “This new company that is buying this business, they’re still going to need a lot of people to run these operations.”
The more than $900 million dollar sale is supposed to go through by the end of June. It marks another dramatic shift due to low natural gas prices. Over the past year WPX had already been cutting the number of drilling rigs and laying off workers in different offices. Swan says selling off Piceance Basin assets now keeps more cash on hand to to survive low prices and transition to oil production.