@17b history has proven that the worst idea on the table is usually the one Encana/Ovintiv makes. Soooo I expect that we will try to run Canada ops out of the woodlands because that would benefit our VP and executive staff that are located there. Imagine how ph--k’d up things would get.
20 replies (most recent on top)
@15e Ahhh I forgot, the oh righteous Denver Office. I am pretty sure it was clowns from your o hallowed halls that priced the Anadarko at 16 wells / section and gave Newfield no choice but to ride off into the sunset. Surfactants and high altitudes must be affecting your mental clarity, unless you've been hanging out on Colfax too much. In all seriousness, there are great people at each of these office locations that will be able to carry this company forward. So why not support each other, instead of letting your insecurities shine through. Denver and Colorado already hate the O&G industry enough, no need to attack one another.
@ag move everything out of Calgary and to Grand Prairie. See how ludacris that sounds? Calgary and Houston provide valuable job market exposure and that’s enough justification to keep them
@159 new field was the worst decision that was ever made. Should’ve taken that money and sunk it in the Permian or Montney. Bunch of clowns in the Woodlands office, if daddy Givens wasn’t in that office it would’ve been shut down years ago. In reality it should be just a 2 location office. Uncle Brendan made a choice to be out off Denver. It should be Denver and Calgary and wipe out Woodlands
@111 thats why we just bought a CDN company? and sold a dead duck/worse purchase in years in the AOA? get real
Looking at the amount of lead, manager, snr mngr, director, chief and vp positions... between all 3 locations, there is about a 1:1 ratio its nearly 1 manager level staff to 1 individual contributor. It's top heavy and doesnt make much sense.
@ag Calgary hasn’t been relevant in years. Move everything to the US and let the Canadian ego die.
@be I think the place with the most fat is Canada. After looking through their head count and operations it’s wild that they’ve made it this long with such surplus.
@wj As far as I can tell, around 11 rigs running in 2026 and currently around 1,500 employees. So about 136 employees per rig. I know it’s a very crude way of looking at it, but speaks volumes to me about the amount of unnecessary work that must be taking place within the organization. I agree with your sentiment on way too many manager level and above. It needs to be a change from the top and a complete rethink of how a company with 2 operating locations should be run. There are some genuinely excellent and innovative employees. But there is also bloating, protectionism and unneeded complexity that so desperately needs to be addressed.
@sr - could be that some of these responses are C-suite but I doubt it - they typically protect themselves and their direct reports in layoffs, I'm one of these advocating for it and I'm certainly not at any high level in the org. The reason I support a big layoff......take a look at our financials - we have a ton of debt - over $5B, who knows what it is after the NuVista deal, we will probably pay $400MM in interest on that debt this year though the AOA sale will help, we have office staffing levels that are way beyond what our peers have, and we simply are not making very much money. Once we sell AOA and our debt goes down our Cash flow also goes down because that asset was cranking cash flow. So - why do I advocate for a big layoff? Because frankly if we don't we are going to get absorbed by some other company that won't be afraid to cut us all loose - we've been on the buying end for NuVista, Paramount, the Permian companies, and we kept almost no one from those companies in the office, our turn will come if we don't solidify ourselves, maybe not this year, maybe not next - but I'd rather have a 75% chance of keeping my job with a company that will be around in 5-10 years then to roll the dice with the staffing levels we have now and let Conoco, Exxon, Diamondback, Devon, or someone like that put us all on the street in 12 months. And if we want to cut the most money possible - it's actually the C-suite and VP levels that we have to hammer.....you won't find a single C-suite person who agrees with that, they will all protect themselves and their direct reports.
All of you people advocating for more job losses are fu--ing hilarious. Why? So the shareholder leaches can make more money? Fu-k them, they don’t have anything to do with the success or operation of the business. The staff do.
Y’all must be c-suite shills looking for bigger bonuses.
@es some got there by excelling at their jobs but far too many got their due to the rife nepotism that has been an undercurrent at the company for many, many years. The company can be run on a fraction of the staff. A bold move is needed. It will not be easy but is absolutely necessary.
@es the hands of an insecure, su-k-up manager wrote this…”top performer” lmao…is that what daddy told you at the last high fence hunt??
I agree it’s a top heavy org at this point. I think top level mgmt views managers, senior managers, directors, etc as top performers. That’s historically how they got into those roles, but now the roles are unnecessary after several asset sales.
The company struggles making deep cuts to those levels because it views those folks as the best, whether you agree with that assessment or not.
@b8 agree with your assessment. The company has been top heavy for years. Think it’s caused by the way in which leadership success has been held in higher esteem than technical acumen for a long time. Chiefs Org was a way to try to address this perhaps but failed miserably in my opinion. How many rigs does the company have running at present? What is the VP, Sr. Manager, Manger count per rig? How does this compare to peers. I think the company could run just as well and far more efficiently on 40% to 50% less staff.
@b8 absolutely agree. Also appreciate that you aren't throwing out devicive or nasty comments about other offices. This can't be a fun time for folks in the Woodlands, but I'm sure Denver and Calgary are also on edge. Each office, org and groups, have their own inefficiencies and fat to trim. Let's hope they do it right this time, whatever that means.
I hate to see it, because we work with great people but this is the chance to do something big, we need a 30% - 40% cut. Our profitability su-ks. Our Ops team is absolutely bloated, we have100 people in chiefs another 100 in CDO, and like 15 in BD? We should start by cutting 1 of the 4 EVP's to set he example - but Brendan won't do that - when he says cut costs he means the rest of us cut the costs, not him. In public companies the recommendation is VP's have orgs with 70 - 100 people total in them. We have VP's with 4, 8, 8, 9, 11, 12, etc. TOTAL people - so will we adjust our VP's? I'd put money on 1 or 2, probably a couple that are within a few months of retirement as a gift to them, but the EVP's will not make any strong moves because they lack boldness. The VP's in turn will say they need all the Sr. Managers they have - another bloated level, so they'll do a few here and there, leaving it like it always is.....to save money we'll lay off a ton of the lowest paid people actually doing the work, and the EVP and VP level will encourage us with talks of "do more with less", "stop doing work that isn't value add" (just not the work you do for me, there will be more of that) because that's what a leader does I guess. Just once I'd like to see us hammer the EVP, VP, Sr. Manager ranks so that less work is being created trying to be sure every one of them know the answer to any question they could ever possibly get. Alas in the end I suspect we won't do nearly enough and we'll get to do this annual exercise again in 2027.
@aj they won’t need to pay for many to move if they cut staff appropriately. And they’ll loose staff to attrition too because some simply won’t want to go. Win win. Then save on the ludicrous travel expenses of having staff constantly traveling to Permian. Time to finally pull trigger on what should have been done years ago.
@ag why pay to move everybody to midland. They have established office space in Denver and probably get a good deal considering overall Denver office space is 30% capacity. So pay to move everyone to midland and then pay for office space which doesn’t exist there? Silly
There simply is no need for any trophy offices in the US. Close Denver & Woodlands and move any necessary US employees to Midland. Everything else out of Calgary. Get rid of any corporate groups that are not absolutely necessary (e.g. SMS, Chiefs) and slash VP and Senior Manager roles in what has always been a top heavy org. With only two asset locations, the company should be able to be run on a fraction of current staffing levels.