The cuts represent roughly 500 full-time jobs and 100 unfilled positions, the company said in an e-mail sent Monday.
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Enbridge said on Monday it made the job reductions in all its business units in locations in Canada and the United States. Half the cuts are in Alberta.
White says that although the steps are necessary for Enbridge to stay competitive, the company remains on strong footing and will continue to grow.
The cuts come shortly after the Canadian Government called for a ban on crude oil tanker traffic.
“While Enbridge is more resilient to commodity price downturns than others, we’re not immune”, spokesman Graham White wrote in an e-mail to the Calgary Herald.
On Friday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau moved to fulfil an election pledge by ordering ministers to “formalize” a crude oil tanker ban on the northern B.C. coast, a command Greenpeace Canada was quick to interpret as “the end of Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline”. The company has said it is still working to satisfy more than 200 conditions attached to its regulatory approval. It cut one-fifth of its senior executive ranks in September. It’s been a tough week for workers at Canada’s two biggest pipeline companies, with TransCanada the latest to hand out layoff notices.
“These changes align with changes that we’re making to our structure to remain competitive and deliver shareholder value, as well as in response to falling oil prices and its effect on our customers”, said Cooper. “We feel like the reductions that were undertaken yesterday won’t jeopardize any of that, that we’ll still be able to maintain, you know, our overall integrity and our approach to our operations”, she said.
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Pipeline companies in Calgary have laid off fewer staff during the oil price downturn than oil and gas producers.
