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The bad news for Cenovus employees follows cuts of 1,500 staff in 2015 and 440 in 2016 in response to oil prices which tumbled from over US$100 per barrel in mid-2014 and have remained low.

Financial analysts applauded Cenovus’s belt-tightening.

Oilsands analyst Nick Lupick of AltaCorp Capital pointed out that Cenovus’s average production target of 493,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day in 2018, up four per cent from this year, is in line with expectations despite its capital spending budget of $1.6 billion coming in well below consensus estimates of $2.1 billion.

The 2018 budget matches the $1.6 billion it expects to spend this year.

The company plans to continue construction of a new 50,000-barrel-a-day phase at its Christina Lake oilsands project in northern Alberta, but will choke back other spending in both oilsands and conventional oil and gas operations.

It plans to spend $270 million in 2018 on the Christina Lake expansion which is to begin producing in mid-2019. The company noted the capital cost is now expected to be about $675 million, one-fifth lower than previously estimated.

Harris said the deferral of work on growth projects will allow the company to reduce staff in those areas.

It will also reduce workers as it completes the sale of four major asset packages and looks to sell a package of non-core conventional assets in the Deep Basin on the northern Alberta-B.C. border. The four deals are to bring in a total of $3.7 billion to help pay for the buyout of most of the Canadian assets of Cenovus’s Houston-based oilsands partner, ConocoPhillips, for $17.7 billion earlier this year.