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When the price of Canadian crude fell to similar depths in 2009, U.S. monetary policy helped prevent a financial crisis from deepening and boosted demand for oil, setting the stage for a relatively swift recovery. This time around, there’s no end in sight to the oil glut, leaving companies no choice but to drastically cut costs to survive.

The rule of thumb for new projects in Canada’s oil sands is that a West Texas Intermediate crude price of about $80 a barrel is needed to earn a return. The paste-like fossil fuel from northern Alberta is selling at a discount of about $13 a barrel compared to U.S. crude, which is now well under $50. Western Canadian Select oil closed Friday at $33.62.

Sunrise Postponed

Husky Energy Inc. pushed back its timeline to start up its C$1.6 billion Sunrise 2A expansion from as early as 2017 to some time next decade. Cenovus Energy Inc. cut spending on new projects by 46 percent this year, halting construction of an expansion of its Christina Lake development and putting its Telephone Lake project on hold.

The technology and labor required to extract the thick bitumen has always meant high costs for oil-sands operations, said Rick George, former Chief Executive Officer of Suncor who led the company for more than two decades through several downturns. The remote locations of projects have added expenses such as road-building for transporting needed equipment to job sites.

In past downturns, the focus was on surviving and reducing expenses. “The parallels to now are the same: every company out there is looking at how they can get their costs down,” George said.