Article content continued

The value of Alberta’s Heritage Fund was $17.6 billion at the end of 2018.

Alberta was hit significantly harder than Texas by the oil price collapse of 2014 and has not experienced an economic rebound, whereas Texas is enjoying a dramatic surge in oil production from the Permian basin.

The province’s most recent recession is a result of a structural change in the energy market in addition to a cyclical downturn in oil prices, said Mary Moran, chief executive of Calgary Economic Diversification.

“I do believe the energy industry will not come back the way it has in the past,” she said, noting that the United States has been Alberta’s traditional oil and gas export market but the country has been enjoying a historic boom of its own. “The global supply map changed forever during this structural change.”

Moran is not counting on an oil-and-gas industry rebound to refill Calgary’s empty office towers, currently plagued by a 25-per-cent vacancy rate. Instead, she is looking to attract companies in agriculture, advanced technology and robotics in an attempt to remake the city into “the industrial innovation centre” for Canada.

“Energy companies have reduced their staff by more than half,” she said. “Many that I’ve talked to don’t believe they’ll be adding employees like they did in the last cycle. We’re going to have to fill that space with different people.”

I do believe the energy industry will not come back the way it has in the past

Calgary’s most ambitious attempt to bring in an outside giant fell apart when Amazon.com Inc. opted to locate its second headquarters to a suburb of Washington, D.C., even though Calgary offered to “fight a bear” for the company’s business.