Schlumberger announces layoffs to 11,000 employees

Oilfield services giant Schlumberger announced Thursday it would lay off 11,000 employees in addition to the 9,000 layoffs it announced in January.

Citing a downturn in exploration and production jobs, principally on U.S. land rigs, Chairman and CEO Paal Kibsgaard said the company's earnings were down 19 percent sequentially in the first quarter. Kibsgaard was speaking at the company's first-quarter earnings meeting.

Schlumberger listed about 123,000 employees worldwide prior to the first layoffs.

Retired LSU economics professor Loren Scott has said that most Louisiana oil and gas jobs are offshore, which he said would not suffer the extent of layoffs that that would be felt in states where most of the drilling is done on land.

For example, much of the oil exploration and production in Texas in recent years has been done on massive shale plays, such as those in the Permian Basin and at the Eagle Ford Shale. Other states that depend upon drilling on land, which demands higher per barrel prices, include Colorado, Wyoming, North Dakota and Ohio.

In Louisiana, drilling is done on land on the Haynesville Shale in northwestern Louisiana and Tuscaloosa Marine Shale in eastern Louisiana.