The press release went out Tuesday.

Maersk Line is laying off 2,000 to 3,000 workers. The company is the container shipping division of A.P. Moller-Maersk Group, the press release said.

The resulting news stories sent a shiver through some local folks biting nails over whether Maersk will decide to build a container shipping facility at Coos Bay. Reports indicated the huge shipping company’s decision to reorganize was due in part to the slump in U.S. trade.

Maersk said the move was “its new strategy to drive the turnaround of the business and return to sustainable profitability.” But it wasn’t just about layoffs. The division is reorganizing regional management, cutting middle managers and putting more decision-making in the hands of regional teams closer to the customers.

And still, local economic development advocates must be wondering what that might mean for talks between the Oregon International Port of Coos Bay and APM Terminals North America, Maersk’s U.S. operating division.

“I don’t think it really is related. I look at it as an adjustment to what’s happening in international trade,” said Martin Callery, the port’s director of communications and freight mobility, on Thursday.

A.P. Moller Maersk is based in Copenhagen, Denmark, and employs 110,000 people worldwide in almost 130 countries. APM Terminals, the division linked to Coos Bay, employs 19,000 people.

Apparently, talks still are a go, though Callery is mum on that.

“I just can’t say much more. We are constrained by a confidentiality agreement,” he said.

The port has hinted since October 2006 that a big container shipping company was eying Coos Bay. Last spring, state Sen. Joanne Verger announced it was Maersk sniffing around.

APM Terminals is seeking a location for a West Coast container shipping terminal to handle as many as 2 million 20-foot-long, standard-sized containers a year. For those vessels to call on Coos Bay, the shipping channel would need to be widened and deepened. The Oregon Legislature committed $60 million toward the channel project. So far, $5 million is going toward environmental studies. The other $55 million is locked in the state’s bank accounts until APM Terminals commits to the project.

That hasn’t happened yet.