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Employees of Cenovus Energy Inc. are on tenterhooks, waiting to find out over the next few weeks if they will be affected by 540 job cuts aimed mainly at the head office ranks in Calgary.

And that’s not the end of it. An as-yet-undetermined number of field-based employees are also due to be laid off in 2016, company spokesman Brett Harris confirmed in response to a Herald inquiry Friday.

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“People know what the (540) numbers are but they don’t know individually,” said Harris.

“Obviously, it’s a terrible, terrible time for everybody and not easy decisions to make but, when your cash flow is significantly reduced, you have to make responsible decisions.”

Cenovus announced in February it would cut 800 positions, mainly targeting contractors, to deal with benchmark U.S. oil prices that had tumbled by more than half to less than US$50 per barrel.

In its second-quarter update at the end of July, it announced it had identified up to 400 more positions, mainly in Calgary, that it would have to eliminate because an expected rebound in commodity prices had not occurred.