Impacted employees will receive a severance package.

“We exhausted all options before taking this step,” company President Judson Wallace said in a statement. “Including voluntary layoffs and early retirement. We have a strong, skilled workforce and I am hopeful we can re-hire people back as our needs change in the future.”

The company said it anticipates this “softened market” to last into 2016 based on industry forecasts.

Oil prices have dropped about 50 percent from last year. As of July 7, the crude oil price was down $51.20 a barrel from the same time a year ago, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Crude oil prices were above $100 per barrel of oil in June 2014.

The company has taken steps to remain competitive in the long term. In addition to the position eliminations, a number of continuous improvement projects and capital investments are in process to help streamline operations. The installation a new state-of-the-art piercer in the Youngstown multi-stand pipe mill, for example, is underway. This replaces equipment dating back to when the original pipe mill was initially installed 30 years ago.

Youngstown’s Vallourec Star is a subsidiary of France-based company Vallourec USA.

In February, the company shut down the operations on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in Youngstown for three weeks, and offered a six-month voluntary layoff with healthcare coverage to continue during that period for those interested.

Before the cuts the company employed 700 workers.

Source: The Youngstown Vindicator