Collapse of SemGroup... (great WSJ Article)

[cannon_fodder]

Whatever ends up happening, this article runs through the company, the situation, and the town in fine fashion.  I think it paints this in a more distant and less panicked light.  Anyway, it's well worth the read:

Collapse of SemGroup
To Leave Tulsa Missing
Its Biggest Booster
By LESLIE EATON and ANA CAMPOY
July 31, 2008; Page C1 (front page of Money and Investing section_

Tulsa, Okla.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121746312843098567.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
[edit]You may have to go here and click through to the link if you don't have a WSJ account. Else I could cut and past upon request. [/edit]

quote:The collapse of SemGroup LP, one of this city's highest-profile companies, is sending a ripple of worry across the prosperous community in the heart of energy country.
. . .
People here are still puzzling over the rapid rise and sudden fall of SemGroup, whose main business was running pipelines and storage facilities for oil and natural gas. The company's bad bets on oil prices sent it into bankruptcy with a $2.4 billion trading loss.
. . .
[$6mil to the Ballet, $50K a year to Family Services, and the Ballpark are mentioned]
.

BUT... BUT BUT BUT.  The article also says:

quote:
Tulsa does have a lot of strengths at the moment. Unemployment is a low 4.2%, according to federal data. The Tulsa metropolitan area has added 18,200 new jobs during the past two years, the Chamber of Commerce said, and the housing market remains relatively strong. Per capita income is $44,321, well above the national average.
. . .
While [the jobs that may be lost] were well-paying and came with perks like an in-house gym, they may not be hard to replace. "Tulsa has been adding more than 400 energy-related jobs every couple of months," said Mark C. Snead, a research economist at Oklahoma State University.
. . .
Since its founding more than a century ago, Tulsa has gone through the booms and busts of the oil business. The city saw very tough times in the 1980s, and in 1999 witnessed the implosion of an even more-highflying company, Commercial Financial Services, a debt-collection agency that at one point employed several thousand people.

Tulsans expect to weather SemGroup's collapse as well. But it won't be without pain.

So after all that economists think we will absorb the loss, our housing market is stable, and our income is "well above the national average."  Tulsa is the wild wild west, boom and bust.  This bust is a small drop in the bucket compared to other ones.  I hope it ends as well as it appears and the serious loss is a temporary philanthropic void (better than serious economic hardship).

Too bad it happened, but we are still better off than in SemGroup never rose and fell.