Oil and Gas

Blue Sky Innovations calling it quits?

by Leslie Turk

Lafayette company laying off entire staff after loss of its only full-time client.

Oilfield logistics company Blue Sky Innovations, which was founded in Lafayette in 2006 and grew to more than a dozen work sites from Galveston, Texas, to Venice, La., notified the Louisiana Workforce Commission on June 30 that it will lay off all of its hourly employees (approximately 55) by the end of the month and will eliminate all three of its salaried positions — most likely by the end of the third quarter.

The company appears to be calling it quits, attributing the fallout to the loss of its only full-time client, which it did not identify in the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification it sent to the state.

Founded by oil industry veterans Ken Bullard and Randy McCollum, Blue Sky Innovations is a service company offering aviation support services, oil and gas consulting and project management. The owners' backgrounds include logistics, safety management, contract management and contract negotiations.

“Some employees may be hired by the company that won the bid,” Blue Sky’s Bullard writes in the notice, also stipulating that Blue Sky will not be offering any severance benefits or transition programs to its laid-off workers. None of the employees are union workers.

Bullard did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment for this story.

Also issuing a WARN, dated July 1, was Dresser Inc., a division of GE Oil and Gas, which is laying off 269 of its approximately 289 manufacturing, sales/service and engineering employees at its union plant in Pineville. This is yet another casualty of falling oil prices, as workers at the plant assemble valve equipment that is used in the oil and gas industry. The layoffs begin Sept. 2 and will be complete by the end of the year.

Companies are required to file WARNs under the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act if there is a full plant closure resulting in 50 or more employees losing their jobs in any 30-day period or if there is a mass layoff during any 30-day period. A layoff is considered a mass layoff if it is more than 500 employees or if it is between 50 and 499 employees and comprises 33 percent or more of the active workforce at that particular site.