Article content continued

On Tuesday, Penn West Petroleumsaid it was reducing its workforce by 35 per cent with a loss of more than 400 full-time employees and contractors. ConocoPhillipsCanada also said it has plans to drop 400 employees, or 15 per cent of its workforce, as well as 100 contractors.

Bob Schulz, professor of strategic management with the University of Calgary’s Haskayne School of Business, said the economic situation in Alberta will lead to more job layoffs in the oilpatch as companies are in the first draft phases for their 2016 annual budgets.

“Most of the companies expect that they’re going to cut back by about 10 per cent of people,” he said, adding that’s in addition to jobs already lost this year in Alberta’s energy sector, which the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers has said is 35,000.

“When they have a downturn, then they lay off the poor performers, the people who aren’t doing well, the people that are part of projects that they’re not going to go ahead on. They lay them off all in a batch,” Schulz said.

“The second thing is they look at forward price expectations and the different departments lay off five or 10 per cent of their people because they’re not going to make their numbers for this year. They’ve already done that.

“What’s happening in the buildings downtown, they’re deciding how many people and which departments. That will be announced probably mid-September, by the end of September, effective in October.”