Thread regarding Suncor Energy Inc. layoffs

Our problem has been the demand excess for oil and gas disappeared a while back and now we might be looking at a technology transition which would make oil demand stagnant if not shrinking. Every oil boom will be followed by a capital investment in renewables and electric transport. China has already added about 400k electric bases others will follow if oil price rise and or electric prices drop.
The differential between pipeline and rail is not extraordinary to start with. Once you start shipping additional crude, the buyers will refuse to pay a premium because they have access to more crude shipments. Our inability to ship oil forces buyers to pay more not less. That is why ksa Russia and opec+ reduce oil production when prices drop, not ship more. Even a 5 percent more oil has a disproportionate impact on oil price around the demand surplus or deficit volumes.

Our problem in Canada is more complex than the price of oil and gas. We only have one customer, USA, and they are now an oil/gas exporter.

Lol do you actually believe in what you wrote? Get your head out of the sand because the world is flying by Alberta. Oil had its day and Alberta failed to plan for this time.

The rant about "Alberta making their bed and now need to lay in it", is the most uneducated post. Comparing the industry now to what it was 30 years ago is absurb. That's like saying the flip phone you used 15 years ago has the same capabilities as the iPhone you're uaing today. The industry and the players have changed. When you're paying tariffs out of your a– and hugely regulated, the cost of doing business is significantly more expensive than other countries who aren't landlocked.
The type of thinking is exactly why Canada's economy will jist continue to dive further down. Until there is another industry booming to replace Oil, people need it for employment and the Federal government need the taxes paid by them.

Can only assume the person complaining about the:

"paying unskilled hammer swingers 100k and half skilled labour 150K."

Is someone sitting at a desk pushing paper and filling a role that provides little to no value to the organization. My guess is that your role is easily automated and you are staring down the barrel of a layoff regretting your life decisions to get that four-year degree that technology would make obsolete in the near future.

Your degree may look s-xy on paper, but how much value does it really add, and how easily are you replaced?

You see, hammer swingers and "half skilled" labour make more money than you would like to expect, because, once you start sc-aping the bottom of the barrel for pay with your hammer swingers and "half skilled" labour, that's when your real problems will start happening. Despite the fact that they may not have as much schooling as you, they have the potential to lose, or gain, the organization far more money than you ever will. The majority of what they know is from experience with the equipment you only see on paper. See: many of the major fire or spills that have happened in recent memory.

You need only look to all the organizations that lost their hammer swingers and "half skilled" labour, during the boom and wage wars, to have a record of the problems encountered when these people are lost. I have yet to hear of an organization that encountered such difficulties when losing a paper pusher. Perhaps, that is why paper pushers do not make as much money as they would like to expect?

You're not as important or as irreplaceable as you think.

Have to agree with the above comments. Working in Alberta oil and gas HR, you have no idea of the waste and greed. The execs reward themselves with huge bonuses when oil prices are high and also when oil prices are low, because gosh they tried so hard not to lose 95% of share value. The boards rate strong performance as not being the worst of the worst. They blame the government, oil prices, US fracking, environmentalists, everyone except their own lack of talent. No one wants to talk about their mismanagement, obscene pay practices, firing and then rehiring like drunken sailors, and nepotism.

Alberta taxpayers are fools for bailing out this industry that never seems to learn anything from previous crashes, where long term planning means hoping oil prices go up, not becoming more efficient. Look at the rush they were all in to get back to the offices, old fashioned boomers not considering saving money on real estate, or increasing employee morale or safety, Just doing things the way they were always done, they just can’t change and deserve to fail.

By the time this will happen, so many people will be out of work.

Hey remember when Albertans were the "Economic Driver of Canada" because they work harder than everyone else?

Turns out, being born on one big oil field had more to do with it than their work effort, and now that the price of oil is permanently lower, what we've found out is the Alberta Oil Industry is actually the least cost efficient, least competent regional oil industry on the planet.

Oh I know, I know, the reason Alberta's oil industry is in the dumps is because we won't build a pipeline to a coast so they can sell their oil to the world. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Alberta has been selling oil to North America for decades and done just fine without a pipeline to a coast.

What's the difference now? Oil isn't $100 a barrel anymore, that's what. And what's weird about that is even when oil was $20 a barrel 30 yrs ago Alberta did fine, but I guess that was before they started paying unskilled hammerswingers 100k and half skilled labor 150K.

Add to that the well known but not talked about "Checkbook problem solving" strategy employed by "competent and efficient" companies in Alberta.

Yup, so now Alberta wants to blame everyone else for their own reckless, incompetent, inefficient business that was covered over by $100 oil but now exposed for the whole world to see at $40 oil.

Made your bed Alberta, now you can sleep in it.

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