The Cameron International facility off LeTourneau Road is closing.

Blake Nicole Herbert, communications coordinator for energy sector giant Schlumberger, which acquired Cameron in April, said the company plans to close the facility by the end of 2016. She provided no other information about the status of employees or if the property might be up for sale.

“That’s news to us,” Warren County Board of Supervisors President Richard George said. “We expected something to develop with that operation down there; you hear a lot of things, but we’ve not been notified of any determined action as yet, that could be on the way. I don’t know.”

“It’s really a difficult thing; LeTourneau’s had a presence here since the 1940s, and at one point, 1,400 employees,” Warren County Economic Development Director Wayne Mansfield said. “It really saddens me to see such a critical part of our industrial infrastructure close, but at the same time, the petroleum industry as a whole is suffering right now.”

Mansfield said Schlumberger had cut more than 10,000 jobs across their company since January, “So it’s not just here, it’s all over. If there’s a positive thing, the petroleum industry is cyclical and at some point I’m sure it will recover.

“They don’t have that many people there; they’ll probably keep about 30 to close the facility down.”

Cameron, which designs, builds and supports equipment for the mining and oil and gas drilling industries, acquired what is known locally as LeTourneau yard in September 2011 from Joy Global for $375 million. Three months earlier, the Vicksburg plant and a sister facility in Houston had been sold to Joy from Rowan Technologies for $1.1 billion. The local property dates to 1944, when it was started as a munitions plant.

In November, Cameron announced it was laying off 222 of its 350 employees, then told Mansfield about three weeks later it was not laying people off. Repeated attempts to contact Cameron for confirmation were unsuccessful.