Bailing Out in Parachute

Exxon's cancellation of the Colony Shale Oil Project was more than a huge financial loss for the world's largest energy company. It was also a startling and crushing blow to the 2,100 workers who lost their jobs and to the merchants in the small prosperity. boomtowns that had been enjoying an Exxon-fueled prosperity.

No one except the company's top executives knew that the bust was coming. Most of the stunned employees at Colony first heard the news on radio or TV. In Battlement Mesa, a half-finished company town built by Exxon, a few furious workers immediately went on a rampage. They overturned garbage cans, tore down company-owned fence and fired shotguns through the windows of their company-owned trailer homes. In the town of Parachute, 15 miles from the Colony site, men piled into O'Leary's Pub and the Old Bank Saloon, where they drank, pounded on the tables and broke into fistfights. Others, gathered in small knots outside on the streets, simply shook their heads and sobbed. Said Ron Ramsey, 29: "Exxon dumped a bomb on us. Where do we go from here?"

Like the fortune-seeking prospectors of the gold-rush days, Colony's workers had thronged to Colorado in the past two years from all over the U.S. By the end of last week many of them were on the move again. Swiftly loading crates stuffed with trucks clothes and tools into their mud-streaked pickup trucks and vans, they headed in every direction.

Some were not so free to go. Walter Saunders, 47, had moved his family from Virginia and bought a $91,000 home in Battlement Mesa. The house has lost perhaps a quarter of its value overnight. "I really don't know what's happening," sighed Saunders last week. "I guess we somehow try to fall back and regroup."

Exxon had envisioned Battlement Mesa, which housed 1,800, as a bustling city for 25,000. Some 65 homes and apartments have been completed, and more than 250 are under construction. Two schools, a recreation complex, a golf course, a supermarket and a shopping center are also unfinished. Though Exxon has not yet decided what to do about Battlement Mesa, the townspeople fear that most of the buildings will never be completed. Said Ray Guerrie, president of the town's First National Bank: "I just hope we can weather this crisis." Last week his tiny bank was packed with Colony workers closing out their accounts.

In nearby Parachute, where the population had quadrupled, to 1,200, in the past year, the outlook was also bleak. Jack Ross, 42, owner of the Valley Cafe, looked over his half-empty lunch counter and grumbled, "We're going to go out of business. That's all there is to it. We won't be able to pay the electric bill after this week." In a case of remarkably unlucky timing, the new Parachute Plaza Motel opened its doors last week. The only guests were a few reporters covering the Colony closing. Town officials, who had put up their first traffic light only last year, were planning for the construction of two shopping centers and an 80-acre industrial park. Now those blueprints have been shelved.

Despite last week's shock, longtime residents of Parachute retained a dogged optimism. They hope that a Union Oil Co. shale project in the area will stay on track and doubt that they have seen the last of Exxon. Said Cecil Gardner, 54, a Parachute native who operates the town's Conoco gas station: "There'll be a boom again. You just wait till gasoline goes up a few more cents a gallon. Oh hell yes, they'll be back." Local people still hope that Parachute and Battlement Mesa will not become ghost towns like Silver City and Russell Gulch, which prospered only briefly during Colorado's gold and silver rushes.

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