Merry Christmas & Happy New Year! Will Encana Spawn’s Greed Kill Your Frac Job? Cutting Workers to Fatten Investors, Making Workers Wonder over the Holidays. Nasty, in True Encana/Cenovus Form

A comment to the Calgary Herald article by Tom Aaron

What lousy reporting. The impact?

This announcement has more impact on the Calgary and Alberta economy (real lives) than anything in the last 90 days. The artsy trained press ‘just doesn’t get it’. Clueless as to what this means for individual contractors, drillers, small towns, etc. A few hundred small oilfield companies just went ‘yikes’…and are deciding whether or not up close up shop for good in Alberta. They are holding on by their finger tips with little hope.

Cenovus Energy plans to cut 500 to 700 jobs in 2018 by Dan Healing, The Canadian Press, December 14, 2017, Calgary Herald

Cenovus Energy Inc. said Thursday it is planning to cut between 500 and 700 employees and contractors as it looks to reduce costs next year.

The cuts will add up to about 15 per cent of its current workforce of about 4,200, spokesman Brett Harris said in an interview, adding the company hopes to achieve the reductions by early next year. [Nasty timing. Intentional to keep workers silent, obedient, willing to take pay and safety cuts?]

The Calgary-based oil producer (TSX:CVE) said it expects to find savings in areas such as drilling performance, development planning and optimized scheduling of oilsands well start-ups.

The cuts come as Cenovus said it plans between $1.5 billion and $1.7 billion in capital spending next year, mostly in the oilsands. That compared with its guidance for capital spending this year of $1.55 billion to $1.65 billion.

Cenovus chief executive Alex Pourbaix said the company’s priorities for 2018 are to reduce costs and deleverage its balance sheet while maintaining capital discipline. [aka Greed. Greed. Greed]

“The sooner we can achieve our long-term debt ratio goal, the sooner we can move to balance returning cash to shareholders with disciplined investments in high-return growth,” Pourbaix said in a statement.

“We will build on the success of our divestiture program and work to exceed the goal, established in June of this year, of achieving $1 billion in cumulative capital, operating and general and administrative cost reductions with the aim of accelerating these reductions over the next two years instead of three.”

Cenovus expects to reduce its per-barrel oilsands operating costs by eight per cent next year and per-barrel oil sands sustaining capital costs by 12 per cent compared with its 2017 forecast.

The company’s stock price rose one per cent to $11.98 in early trading Thursday.

Cenovus shares have struggled since the company announced a deal in March to buy out its Houston-based oilsands partner, ConocoPhillips, for $17.7 billion. [Greed. Greed. Greed and a lot of stupidity]

The move was criticized by analysts who said Cenovus lacked the experience to operate ConocoPhillips’ northern Alberta and B.C. Deep Basin conventional assets included in the deal.

Since then, Cenovus has struck deals to sell four major asset packages for a total of $3.7 billion to help pay for the purchase.

It said the combined net proceeds from the asset sales will be used to fully retire the outstanding amount on its asset-sale bridge facility.

Cenovus said it is also looking to sell a package of non-core assets in the Deep Basin. [Emphasis added]

Cenovus Energy plans to cut 15% of workforce to reduce costs, Calgary-based company’s shares have struggled since $17.7B deal to buy Canadian assets of ConocoPhillips by The Canadian Press, Dec 14, 2017, CBC News

Cenovus Energy Inc. said Thursday it is planning to cut about 15 per cent of its workforce as it looks to reduce costs next year.

The company said it expects to find savings in areas such as drilling performance, development planning and optimized scheduling of oilsands well start-ups.

The cuts come as Cenvous said it plans between $1.5 billion and $1.7 billion in capital spending next year, mostly in the oilsands. That compared with its guidance for capital spending this year of $1.55 billion to $1.65 billion.

Cenovus chief executive Alex Pourbaix said the company’s priorities for 2018 are to reduce costs and deleverage its balance sheet while maintaining capital discipline.

“The sooner we can achieve our long-term debt ratio goal, the sooner we can move to balance returning cash to shareholders with disciplined investments in high-return growth,” Pourbaix said in a statement.

“We will build on the success of our divestiture program and work to exceed the goal, established in June of this year, of achieving $1 billion in cumulative capital, operating and general and administrative cost reductions with the aim of accelerating these reductions over the next two years instead of three.”

The company expects to reduce its per-barrel oilsands operating costs by eight per cent next year and per-barrel oilsands sustaining capital costs by 12 per cent compared with its 2017 forecast.

Cenovus shares have struggled since the company announced a deal in March to buy out its Houston-based oilsands partner, ConocoPhillips, for $17.7 billion. [Raging greed in corporations tends to do that]

The move was criticized by analysts who said Cenovus lacked the experience to operate ConocoPhillips’ northern Alberta and B.C. Deep Basin conventional assets included in the deal.

Since then, Cenovus has struck deals to sell four major asset packages for a total of $3.7 billion to help pay for the purchase.

It said the combined net proceeds from the asset sales will be used to fully retire the outstanding amount on its asset-sale bridge facility.

Cenovus said it is also looking to sell a package of non-core assets in the Deep Basin. [Emphasis added]

Wall Street Tells Frackers to Stop Counting Barrels, Start Making Profits, The shale-oil revolution produces lots of oil but not enough upside for investors by Bradley Olson and Lynn Cook, Dec. 6, 2017, Wall Street Journal

Twelve major shareholders in U.S. shale-oil-and-gas producers met this September in a Midtown Manhattan high-rise with a view of Times Square to discuss a common goal, getting those frackers to make money for a change. [Emphasis added]

[Refer also to:

2017 09 05: Cheapskate Bully Aquifer-Fracker Encana, sitting on $Billions, kills $50,000.00 annual “corporate partnership” funding to Rosebud Theatre, blames economy. Greed & nastiness more likely reasons ]

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