In late September, Imperial Oil announced plans to slash 900 jobs by 2027 in Calgary. While the company delivered the bad news to staff and their families, it went on a hiring binge in India and other countries.
Imperial Oil is a Canadian petroleum company that is majority owned by Texas-based ExxonMobil. The company said most of the cuts will be among engineers, analysts, technical staff and managers at its Calgary headquarters in Quarry Park and that the restructuring will save the company $150 million annually.
“Leveraging the rapidly advancing technology environment and the growth of global capability centres, this restructuring plan advances our long-standing strategy of maximizing the value of our existing assets,” said John Whelan, Imperial’s Chairman, President and CEO, in a media release that was cold comfort to Albertans losing their jobs. “At the same time, these actions enhance our foundation for future growth and position us to continue delivering industry-leading returns and long-term value for our shareholders.”
But that’s not the whole story, said a former Imperial oil engineer whose engineer husband is one of the Calgary employees caught in the cuts. She said this move is about outsourcing family-supporting Canadian jobs to low cost centres around the world.
“It is the tip of the iceberg of what is to come,” she told TheRockies.Life on condition of anonymity. “Are there any regulations and policies keeping jobs in Canada, especially if it is a national resource?”
ExxonMobil currently has 215 job postings listed for India in a wide variety of professions, from engineers, data analysts and software developers to cyber security specialists and sales staff.
The company also currently has nearly 80 job postings in Texas, but is recruiting for just five positions in Canada.
Canada’s loss is a win for the company – and India
While the company’s professionals face layoffs and an uncertain future in Calgary, Imperial’s shareholders are grinning. The company recently reported better than expected 3rd quarter profit thanks to record production.
Alberta’’s job loss is also India’s win. ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron and bp (British Petroleum) are among the big oil players increasingly outsourcing work to India’s booming global capability centres (GCCs) found in cities like Chennai and Hyderabad.
India’s 1,700 GCCs across all sectors currently employ 1.9 million professionals and generate $65 billion (USD) in revenue annually for India.
The good old days are gone
The good old days of 2004 when Imperial Oil relocated its corporate head office from Toronto to Calgary seem like a distant memory now. Once the recently announced job cuts hit the floor, only 200 of the company’s 1100 Calgary employees will keep their jobs.
In a recent interview with the Globe and Mail, Whelan said most of Imperial’s Canadian staff will be relocated to its Strathcona Refinery by 2028 but added some jobs would be outsourced to its GCCs in India.
“We will remain a proud Canadian company,” Whelan said. “An industry-leading, technology-focused energy company contributing significantly to the country and our shareholders.”
CEO says Imperial is proudly Canadian – employees think otherwise
Imperial employees getting the axe in Calgary aren’t buying Whelan’s proud Canadian company claims.
“As an engineer working in Canada in Oil & Gas for 25+ years, where can I work now?? No need to answer my question. I already found it,” wrote a commentator on The Layoff that included a link to an ExxonMobil job posting for an engineer in India.
One writer commented how Whelan has vanished from the scene since dropping the layoff bomb in September.
“After announcing major layoffs and the transfer of operations from Calgary to Edmonton, John Whelan has been completely absent. No follow-up email, no public address, and not even a presence in supervisor forums to discuss the impacts of the decision. Employees are left in uncertainty, while leadership has gone silent. It’s disappointing to see the person responsible for these major organizational changes disappear from view. Maybe he is busy setting up that “advocacy office” in Calgary,” they write.
Another commentator on The Layoff shared the anxiety around big oil’s outsourcing of Canadian oil and gas sector jobs.
“I’ve got a family, aging parents, bills that keep climbing, and debt that isn’t going anywhere, while the options out there shrink by the day. So yeah, I’m worried out of my mind. It’s not helpful, but I honestly don’t know how to help myself. Most of us don’t have solid ground to stand on or savings to weather the storm.”
More profit, fewer jobs per barrel
Extracting more profit for shareholders with fewer jobs is the trend in Canada’s oil and gas industry. A Pembina Institute study released in August shows how the sector shed 35,000 jobs between 2014 and 2024, a jobs-per-barrel reduction of 43 percent.“As Canada weighs which nation-building projects to fast-track or even to subsidize, oil and gas expansion – often sold as a guaranteed path to prosperity – deserves more scrutiny. A decade of aggressive cost-cutting has caused a significant – and so far sustained – decline in jobs across the oil and gas sector, while production has increased,” said Janetta McKenzie, director of the Pembina Institute’s oil and gas program, in a media release.
