Thread regarding Nexen Inc. layoffs

That decision on TransMountain was a watershed moment in many ways, and in a bad sense of the word. I am seeing substantially fewer job postings as compared to last fall, and at this time the job market is usually quite active.

I think this is going to be another bad year for oil&gas with the corresponding impacts to industries supporting it.

I was lucky to get the package after 10 years in a dead end position under a bad manager that was only concerned about himself (the I in team). I laugh at those left there as its only a matter of time until CNOOC pulls the pin on Canada and I doubt the packages will be one cent more than what is stated on the offer letter.

Most dangerous place i ever worked..I was so happy the day i left the site for good on my own terms!I learned that people are driven by the mighty dollar and their heads swell as they see their paychecks.Safety and onjob training was non exesitant as well and the big explosion that killed 2 people was predictable because of all the nrar misses that occured on an almost daily basis.Its a right decision they shut it down for good because it would of blew up sky high eventually and killed many more.

5 years after takeover and major changes are expected. No more Nexen. Same status as in any other country for CNOOC.

I second this

"Nexen babies" have their lips zipped at all times. They have a "chameleon" skin, they can change it and go with the flow. A number of young folks at Nexen are trying to get promoted. It is quite hard now to do that. Those, who got promoted after Nexen acquired additional % of LL assets, got really lucky. But their level of competence is quite low. It is very true that the experience they have at Nexen is not enough to be successful in other co.

Chinese acquired Nexen in order to get into US and Latin America. Canada assets will have a very "idle" activity. And gradually you will see less and less people working for Canada assets. US is becoming more attractive for investments. Houston office will have more life. QW can hire more of his former colleagues from Nortel (once upon a time the most corrupt company in Canada). And he is good in ruling his HR web at Nexen.

That is a really interesting perspective. I agree that the Canadian core is to blame, as there were always too many people there and the managers are ineffective and not technically strong and never have been. However, the Chinese somehow could not solve the problem and are partially to blame too. As you said there are so many "mini projects" of all sorts and that causes a need to retain many people, when it would make more sense to just concentrate on one successful project. The Chinese also did not properly consider some of technical challenges that exist with the Nexen properties and also did not come up with a way to improve them. They kept the wrong people in management in many cases - people who just continued with the old Nexen ways and never speak up. So, that is on the Chinese. Hopefully another company buys Nexen assets, and fires everyone and employs their own people. That seems to be the only way to solve the problems - start all over again as nothing anyone has ever done has worked.

It was really frustrating for me to be let go seeing how many incompetent people are still there, and how they walk around downtown Calgary like some sort of privileged class working at a big oil and gas company. But, as has been said, everyone else in the oil and gas industry just kind of laughs at Nexen and the people in it.

I was happy to get out a year ago. I found that if you do offer constructive criticism of the company it is deemed "below the line" and is used against you. The company has two plays in Canada. One is the high CO2, a little H2S and the rest methane (plus a bunch of corrosive frac water) shale gas play in NE BC. This is a very expensive gas to produce requireing difficult and expensive treatment prior to sales or LNG and leaves a heavy carbon footprint. The reserves are insufficient to support a LNG terminal. There are no LPG liquids to pay for the production and treating and the economics are difficult. The other is the Long Lake tar-sands and upgrader play that has been fraught with operational problems (upgrader is now permanently shut down) and higher than industry normal steam to oil ratios in the SAGD production. Neither of the 2 plays have been profitable and yet the head office has a huge staff of project management, procurement and discipline engineers playing with pointless mini projects at these Canadian ventures that are going nowhere. The company was very lucky to be bought out by the Chinese who kept the ship above water and seem to be afraid to lay off too many people (a cultural thing) and get the staffing down to what it should be in terms of heads per BOE/d. Staff seem to blame the Chinese for all their ills, but in reality its the Canadian core that they inherited that are, and have always been, the problem and the poor Chinese are finally finding this out.

I found that Nexen had many "Nexen babies" which are people who got jobs at Nexen right after school, got promoted through the ranks at Nexen and never worked at any other companies. I don't know if these same people would succeed at other companies. Perhaps the Nexen babies know this and know they need to stay at Nexen for this reason. I would just say I was shocked at how few people would question management even if they knew something could be done better or should have been done a different way. Hope everyone still there feels good about themselves for being so obedient.