Low oil prices are being blamed for rounds of layoffs at Penn West Petroleum and Conoco Phillips in northeast British Columbia.
Both companies announced September 1 they would be laying off hundreds of people.
Penn West said it would reduce its total workforce by 35%, representing over 400 full-time employees and contractors. The layoffs were set to take place that day, with the remainder of the workforce reduction expected by the end of the year.
Most of the employees and contractors leaving were located in their Calgary head office, the company said in a release. A spokesperson for the company who did not want to be named said “a very small number” of people in the company’s B.C. operations would be affected. However, he declined to say how many staff members would be impacted or when the layoffs would take place.
"We have made a number of exceptionally difficult decisions in order to remain competitive in the current commodity price environment," Penn West CEO Dave Roberts said.
"We view the cost reductions as sustainable and we will remain well positioned for the potential expansion of development activities and capital programs in the future."
Last March, Penn West said that it was not losing money on its operations, and that it did not plan to lay off the 20 or so people who work in the region.
“(Generally) in terms of Penn West’s business focus over the last kind of 18 months, we’re not growing our business in northeast B.C.,” Moffatt said last March. “These are non-core areas, and at the right price, we would entertain offers to sell those assets.”
ConocoPhillips employees in Fort St. John may also start to feel the pinch of low oil prices.
The company announced that it would lay off about 15% of its Canadian workforce, including 400 employees and 100 contractors.
Rob Evans, a spokesman for ConocoPhillips, said the precise locations of the layoffs had yet to be fully determined, as the actual decisions of layoffs had yet to be made.
"Over the next couple of weeks, we'll understand where we'll go," he said.
The majority of the layoffs are set to occur in the company’s main Calgary office.
Evans said falling oil prices were "certainly a driver" for the layoffs, but also a need to get rid of some of the “bureaucracy,” and a change in the organization in light of a changing cost environment.
Thirty people are employed in ConocoPhillips northeastern B.C. operations, Evans said.
