By JAMES RONALD SKAINS

Louisiana Pacific recently announced the layoff of about 100 workers at its Urania, Louisiana plywood mill, because of plywood oversupply.

According to a company spokesman, the layoffs are technically temporary, but will last indefinitely. The company said it will rehire workers when demand increases.

The layoffs may be a prelude to closing the Urania operation, which was scheduled to be shut down a year and a half ago but kept open with an infusion of money from State sources.

Louisiana Agriculture & Forestry Commissioner Bob Odom who has spearheaded the two-year effort to keep the two Louisiana Pacific mills in production at Urania told the Piney Woods Journal, ``The plants will remain in production for at least another 7 or 8 months. At that point, hopefully market conditions will have improved to the point whereby Louisiana Pacific will decide to upgrade the plant and keep it open permanently.''

Odom met with Mark Suwyn, the LP CEO in August in Portland, Oregon when he first became aware of LP's intentions to close the plywood and OSB mills in Urania. Odom had provided Louisiana Pacific access to $5.7 million in Agriculture & Forestry Department bond money in January of 1999.

Commissioner Odom also told the Journal, ``LP has only used $1.6 million of the $5.7 million that we provided to them. This is money that they will eventually have to pay back if they use it. Evidently, from what they tell me, market conditions have been so poor that they did not think that using all the $5.7 million at this time was a good investment.''

Dr. Dwight Vines, spokesman for Congressman John Cooksey's District office which includes Urania, pointed out Cooksey's involvement in the recent efforts to keep the Urania plants open. ``We felt that the new agreement to allow LP to reduce employment at the mills to 300 was a much better option that having the mills totally close.''

``We feel that LP's intentions to close the mills were driven by market conditions,'' Vines also noted. ``There is no doubt that the Louisiana wood products industry is under extreme competition both domestically and internationally. There is a lot of forest products being imported in the USA at this time.''

Odom in detailing the new agreement with LP, pointed out that employment at the facilities in Urania will fall from 390 to around 300. ``We actually had two different groups interested in purchasing the Urania facilities. However, when the markets went away, they changed their minds about buying.''

``Under this new agreement, we did not give LP any new incentives to keep the plants open other than agreeing to the reduction in labor force,'' Odom stated. ``With our Forest industry now competing in the global economy, we have to do all we can on all levels to keep our mills in production.''

In a phone conversation with State Forester Paul Frey, who is Deputy Commissioner under Bob Odom, Frey told the Journal that the State Forestry office had plenty of pine seedlings available. ``Our sales of seedlings at the Nursery have been slow because most people thought the drought was going to continue. But the rains have come and it looks like it will be a good planting season by December and January.''

Frey also noted that December 11 is the next meeting of the Forestry Commission which will set severance tax stumpage rates. ``We will actually meet with the Tax Commission in setting the severance tax rates.''

``We are very much aware of the present difficulties throughout the Forest industry. We are looking at all possibilities to make things easier in the Forest industry.''