Are low oil prices helping or hurting you?

[reade]

I make my living providing service to the local producers so low oil has just about cut my business in half (or more). It's common to say when gas is $1.50 a gallon but you don't have the $1.50 to buy it with......

How are you guy's making it, better or worse?

 

[Hobbes]

I've taken 2 road trips so far.
Guess I would say things are better for me.

 

[easy]

Being retired, the money doesn't go up. So the lower the better for me.

 

[tntrex]

Better for me as well.
Fuel, feed, fertilizer are all easier to swallow. They were getting waaay out of hand price wise.

But Input costs have not gone down for me at the rate oil fell. Or the rate corn fell. Yet as oil was going up my feed price sure as hell shot up. So did fertilizer.

 

[Okey-Dokey]

Well, the price at the pump sure is nice. However, the economy as a whole in this state sure doesn't look good right now.

 

[SlugSlinger]

There are 2 ways to analyze and answer your question.

Short term things are fine with lower gas prices. However, gasoline fuel is such a small portion of my overall budget the change is essentially immaterial.

However, working for a midstream company, I believe the lower prices have cost me a promotion, I did get compensated in other ways, but long term, a promotion would be better. Also, an email was distributed Friday telling some legacy employees they will be receiving a letter that will tell them about their future with the company and what options they may have.

I also heard Friday, that there will likely be another 20,000 layoffs in Oklahoma in the energy industry primarily due to the continuing low oil prices. I don't think we've seen the worst of these low oil prices impact on the state (or individual's) finances yet.

 

[druryj]

Well, the price at the pump sure is nice. However, the economy as a whole in this state sure doesn't look good right now.

Correct. And in the long term, this hurts us all.

 

[Shadowrider]

My office just had our only project put on hold. The office in another state who we were helping is being drastically cut back. Supposedly we have another project in Oklahoma starting as soon as tomorrow, but we haven't got the go ahead. So all in all I don't know if I have work tomorrow morning or not. We used to have over 400 independent brokers working in several states. The email I got Friday had 9 people in the address bar. So I'll let others decide if that $2.17 per gallon E10 is a good thing for me.

 

[twoguns?]

Sure its nice to fill up my 26 gal p/u for less than $100
Living in OK one has to know this hurts....finances
My Living used to depend on oil, not so much now
But its easy to see construction is not what it should be
Tax collections are down, and that could hurt my lively hood
So, not feeling it yet, but know its coming
If nothing else......there are a lot of workers that might work for less.....that hurts them

 

[lkothe]

Hurt our business. ... most of our companies services are oil and gas based....low oil prices have cut back on companies using contractors like us.