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Originally Posted by lorenavedon
I keep hearing stuff like this and how there are companies that are profitable at much lower prices. A few major producers that can still turn a profit at low prices will not sustain the Alberta economy and the tens of thousands of people moving here every year for these mythical million dollar zero experience jobs everyone thinks is out here. Job creation in Calgary is not because of a few major companies. It's the thousands of small companies that depend on other small companies consistently feeding them small jobs, projects, pipelines, wellsites etc. If you think a few major producers in the oil sands is going to sustain a city of 1,300,000 people and $600,000 average house prices you have another thing coming. A profitable company in tough economic times will still scale back to increase efficiencies. These few companies will still lay off as many people as possible and run on skeleton crews while smaller EPCMs will continue to lay off until they go bust due to lack of small projects. Around Calgary right now there is nothing but layoffs. Just because you know of an engineer that has it good working for Suncor is not a reflection of the economy right now among small EPCMs that are laying off staff all over the place. I don't think there is room at Suncor or EnCana for 50,000 new people that no longer have work. The economy moves slow, just wait until next year when these laid off people start to run out of savings and EI and have to chose between putting food on their table and paying off their $600,000 mortgage. People need to remember that a profitable company keeping things stable does not create or sustain jobs. To sustain jobs at engineering companies you need a constant stream of NEW projects. There are no NEW projects. Everything has been put on hold or canned altogether.
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I don't think that you realize that probably 40% of money spent in the oilsands business is sustaining capital work, that will continue regardless. Your doom and gloom nonsense doesn't hold much water when you compare this downturn to 2008. We have a short to medium term decline in pricing, but its not the bottom falling out of the basket. Marginal projects have already been shelved, but I haven't heard any announcements that will have a material impact on employment province wide.