Anadarko Petroleum, normally one to weather downturns without letting people go, became the latest Houston company to announce widespread layoffs due to low oil prices. The fourth-largest oil company in the US is cutting about a thousand jobs, or roughly 17% of its workforce, to survive the downturn. Most of the layoffs will be from Anadarko’s two-tower HQ in The Woodlands, according to FuelFix.
Until recently, The Woodlands has seemed impervious to the downturn. Hotels and shopping centers are going up every day, as are new office buildings (642k SF under construction). PMRG’s Q4 office report shows The Woodlands ended the year at 86.2% occupancy, a 3.4% drop year-over-year despite 575k SF of positive absorption in 2015. At that point, the submarket had 1.5M SF directly available and 490k SF of sublease listed. More than 1M SF of Class-A spec is available in new deliveries, which seemed fine when crude cost $100. Now that a barrel costs about the same as lunch for two at Treebeards, Houston is feeling the hangover. [FF]
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