Halliburton says it’s adding 2,000 U.S. jobs in the first quarter and ramping up activity faster than anticipated to try to match the surging oilfield activity, especially in West Texas, FuelFix.com reports.
In a rare operations update call, Halliburton Chairman and CEO Dave Lesar said the company is spending more money now to protect market share and ensure stronger profits in the future. The plan to “frontload as much of the costs as we can” will mean weaker profits short term to better position Halliburton in the future.
“We are coming off of a historic trough, so what we have to add back is almost unprecedented,” Lesar said, warning that the company’s first-quarter earnings won’t be as strong as previously projected.
At the end of the year, Halliburton had 50,000 employees after cutting 35,000 positions over a two-year oil bust. Now, jobs are beginning to return and idled equipment reactivated. Profits will follow later, Lesar said.
Because oilfield activity is picking up faster than Halliburton anticipated, the company is losing some market share temporarily and spending more to maintain as much of that market share as possible, says Bill Herbert, a senior energy analyst at Piper Jaffray & Co.
Halliburton is the North American leader in hydraulic fracturing, used to extract as much oil and gas as possible from shale rocks.
