Doepker industries lays off 58 employees in Saskatchewan

Another 58 jobs have been cut in Saskatchewan amid a downturn in the oil industry — this time at Doepker Industries.

The company, which manufactures trailers that haul heavy equipment, has laid off 39 people in Saskatoon and another 19 in Moose Jaw.
        
Among its products are trailers for the oil and gas industry. The job losses total 12 percent of the company's workforce.

Bottom of the wave

Lionel Doepker, part owner in the family-run business, says it has enough demand from the agriculture and forestry sector to maintain work for its 400 remaining employees.

"It's happened over the years, the same as the rest of the oil cycles," he said. "It just seems to come and go in a series of waves and right now, we're on the bottom part of that wave."

Plunging crude oil prices have prompted many companies in North America to scale back in drilling and extraction, and that trickles down to companies that service.

Halliburton closes Regina office

Last week, the Halliburton oil and gas services company announced it was closing its Regina office.

It had opened in 2013 with about 120 employees in order to service the then-booming Bakken oil play.
    
Brian Zinchuk, the editor of Pipeline News in Estevan, a monthly paper about the Saskatchewan Oil and Gas industry says a general slowdown in the economy can be expected while commodity prices are low.

"Businesses are going to shut down. There's going to be lots of layoffs," he said. "There's just no way around it. And you cut the amount of money coming in by over half, when you look at how much oil has dropped, there's no other way around it."

Contract workers seeing less work

In addition to layoffs, some contractors who get paid by the job or the hour are finding work drying up.

Terry Gunderman, manager of Red Hawk Well Servicing in Oxbow, said his company is dealing with a "drastic slowdown."    

"For sure," he said. "Our business has probably dropped by close to 50 percent in the last couple of months."

Red Hawk's primary business is repairing and maintaining existing oil wells.

"With the drop in oil prices, a lot of companies aren't fixing the wells because their economics don't work on them to do repair work," he said. "If they quit, they're just leaving them down and not fixing them."

Red Hawk had to lay off one welder, but most of its crews get paid by the job.

"The majority of our staff are hourly paid, so they're taking a drastic drop in income," he said.

Some employees volunteering to take time off

A similar story is heard at Godson's Mechanical, a truck and trailer repair business, also in Oxbow.

"It's slowed down," said owner Don Godson. 

He estimates a 30 to 40 per cent drop in business since the first week in February

He hasn't had to lay anyone off, but says that's because some employees volunteered to take time off.

"It's definitely affecting everything. Once the drills stop drilling, it trickles down to all the other services and businesses," Godson told CBC News.