(File Photo: Cenovus’ Christina Lake project. Cenovus / WEB)
Cenovus is cutting between 300 to 400 office jobs in Calgary in the second half of this year in an effort to further reduce spending after second quarter profits took a tumble.
The company saw an 80 per cent drop in quarterly earnings posting a $126 million profit in the second quarter, a steep decrease compared to the $615 million profit that was seen in 2014.
“It’s always a very difficult decision to have to let talented workers go but we are in a new economic reality here and we expect that oil prices are going to remain rather low for a prolonged period of time,” said Brett Harris, Spokesperson. “We have to make sure that we are doing everything that we can do reduce our costs across the company and a portion of that is going to be our workforce.”
Cenovus has already cut 800 jobs this year, most of those contractors and Harris says more job losses could be coming, “we’ll be looking at additional work force reductions in our field operations in 2016.”
It’s on track to realize about $280 million in cost reductions this year, more than the original target of $200 million.
The company is changing gears and focusing on expanding its existing oilsands projects but it’s also looking at funding some recently deferred projects for next year.
“We have our Christina Lake and Foster Creek oilsands projects and […] and we are continuing right now with our Christina Lake Phase F and Foster Creek Phase G project those are well under construction right now,” said Harris. “If the conditions look right in the next year we’re looking at restarting work on the next phases and that would be Christina Lake Phase G and Foster Creek Phase H as well as renewing some of the work that had already begun at our new Narrows Lake project.”
Those decisions are expected to be made towards the end of the year.
