CUT OFF, La. — “The first thing you hear is, ‘Can you cut 10 percent?’ ” explained Jimmy Lafont, whose towboat operation is one of the countless oil-field service companies spread across south Louisiana. “Cajuns normally have a habit of cutting the price quick like.”
As oil prices drop, the squeeze has begun in south Louisiana. It starts with ugly state budget projections, layoff announcements and freezes on new construction projects. Cutbacks at the drilling companies lead to cutbacks at the service companies, and before long the grocery stores and car dealerships start feeling it.
“The price of oil,” Mr. Lafont said over biscuits and coffee in a back room of his office just off the bayou, “controls everything in south Louisiana.”
But every downturn is a little bit different, and every downturn falls unevenly — even within the oil industry, as Louisiana’s complicated place in the current price collapse shows.
The frontline casualties of the current price collapse have been in the shale-drilling boom towns of Texas and North Dakota. These shale plays, where hydraulic fracturing tapped massive oil reserves, rocketed into prominence and have come hard back down to earth.
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Mr. Cheramie, however, also sits on the Greater Lafourche Port Commission. Port Fourchon, which he helps oversee, is still undergoing a massive expansion to take part in the deepwater drilling frenzy, driven by giants like Chevron, Exxon, BP and Shell.
“We’re not slowing down in Fourchon, I can tell you that right now,” Mr. Cheramie said, as excited as he was morose in his other comments.
“Price goes down, everybody panics,” he said. “But in a year, the price comes back up. And it’s higher.”
A version of this article appears in print on February 1, 2015, on page A11 of the New York edition with the headline: Louisiana Squeezed as Oil Prices Drop. Order Reprints| Today’s Paper|Subscribe
