"While these reductions are difficult, we believe they are necessary to work through this challenging market," Halliburton spokeswoman Emily Mir said.

"We continue to monitor the business environment closely and will make adjustments to the cost structure of our business as needed."

Halliburton CEO Dave Lesar last month acknowledged uncertainty from his workforce as its impending takeover of Baker Hughes looms, flagging restructuring and potential market-driven lay-offs in what he forecasted to be a "tough year" in 2015.

While the Texas Workforce Commission said the state agency had not received any notifications from Halliburton of job cuts, in some cases companies were not required to notify state regulators.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas also said yesterday that it projected Texas employers to add 235,000 to 295,000 workers to their payrolls this year.

Meanwhile, a model of how oil prices affect US jobs shows the oil slide could cost Texas some 140,000 jobs.

The news comes as a handful of oilfield services companies owned by Houston-based OFS Energy Fund - which has around $US320 million in assets under management and invests in oil field service firms - laid off about 150 workers in Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and elsewhere due to the depressed oil market.

"We've had some of our companies closer to the drilling rig layoff upwards of 25% of their employees. We want to retain our good people but you have to deal with these circumstances, and it's going to call for expense control," OFS Energy managing partner Bruce Ross told Fuelfix.

"We've got to lower our labour costs. We just have to. We're not in the business of losing money."