Newfield Exploration’s Tulsa office hasn’t quite been closed a year, but a handful of the approximately 200 employees who lost their jobs have started to drill their own wells in an Oklahoma basin.
Corterra Energy became an Oklahoma corporation in December, several months after Valerie Mitchell, Corterra’s CEO, was no longer in charge of Newfield’s Tulsa location.
Now her fledgling exploration and production company is grappling with building a business from scratch during a challenging time for energy producers. Mitchell looked for jobs after leaving Newfield but decided to start her own company rather than going to work for someone else.
The talent available after a series of layoffs in Tulsa was a major factor in her decision.
Corterra has 10 full-time employees and about 10 contractors, some of whom Mitchell would like to make full-time.
“I thought there was a lot of talent here in Tulsa,” said Mitchell. “I knew there was people that wanted to stay here. … Apache had left, and you had Essom Energy that left. Samson was kind of struggling. You had other companies that were struggling. … In terms of a talent pool to build a company, I felt like this was a great place to start.”
Newfield’s Tulsa office closure was among the rash of layoffs and closures when the price of oil plunged in 2015 due to a worldwide oil glut.
The city’s energy industry suffered, particularly exploration and production companies like Newfield. Apache Corp. closed its office. Samson Resources wobbled and headed into bankruptcy.
Other companies, including legacy Tulsa firms, shed jobs that haven’t been replaced during the industry’s slow recovery.
Employment experts and industry observers say that most of the jobs Tulsa lost aren’t coming back. Price-conscious innovation and the dwindling presence of exploration and production companies means if those jobs return, it will be in Houston or Oklahoma City.
However, the disruption has paved the way for start-ups such as Corterra and Atalaya Resources, which was started by Apache veterans before the company’s Tulsa office closed.
Tom Seng, assistant professor of energy business at the University of Tulsa, said: “There’s no two ways about it. We’ve lost some large E&P entities. I say large on a Tulsa scale since we’re not the home of the majors anymore. … The question will be what does Samson look like?”
Seng said there’s been a shift in Tulsa’s employment mix and that’s been reflected…