Edmontonian
Active Member
Your obsession with hating Calgary is so strange. If more oil companies follow suit with similar large scale re-structuring its bad news for Alberta as a whole.
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- Thread starter Daveography
- Start date
johnnyboy
Active Member
Yes, these jobs have a shelf-life of what... maybe 20 or 25 years max before they're all lost in this province? Not much to gloat about there...
EdmTrekker
Senior Member
I care about Edmonton and Canada in that order and Alberta not at all under the UCP.
MacLac
Senior Member
No hate…..you don’t think for a second that YYc’ers would be having a parade if this happened in YEG? Cause they would. Btw, I am also a YEG’er first than a Canadian. Read these comments and tell me that they don’t deserve it.
Btw, I’ve worked on the oil patch for 30 years. I’ve been through the ups amd downs as a consultant. So when the job is over which always happens, so does your job and you have to find the next one……
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Gronk!
Senior Member
Imperial Oil to cut 900 jobs, will mostly leave Calgary
Company says changes to come by end of 2027
Calgary-based Imperial Oil says it will be eliminating 20 per cent of its workforce by the end of 2027.
That will mean approximately 900 jobs, most of which are in Calgary, will be lost. In a statement to CBC News, company spokesperson Lisa Schmidt said most of the remaining Calgary positions will be relocated to the Strathcona Refinery in Edmonton in late 2028.
"We plan to maintain a small presence in Calgary," she said.
According to its 2024 annual report, Imperial Oil had 5,100 regular employees by the end of that year. Imperial's head office has been located in Calgary since 2004.
MacLac
Senior Member
Still feeling sorry for them now? They can stay in YYC….piss off all of them
Oilguy
Active Member
I get the sentiment, but this is not good news for our province as a whole, so I have a tough time celebrating it. I guess I can go so far as to say if they were going to do this anyways, I’m glad Edmonton and our region get some upside.
As someone who works in the corporate world, I am glad retirement is under 10 years away because they have no vision. They can’t see that eliminating all the jobs to meet quarterly targets, and send them offhsore will eventually mean nobody can buy anything, and they will feel the consequences of that. But that will be long after the current crop has cashed in so not their problem.
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IanO
Superstar
That's really bad for the province as a whole and something that should NOT be celebrated as 'an Edmonton win'.
Edmonton has more than enough trouble retaining corporate folks, has been very poor at corporate sector growth and it continues to be one of our greatest challenges as a city.
archited
Senior Member
^ You have just underlined the reason behind celebrating it as an "Edmonton win" by in turn celebrating everything Calgary while concurrently denigrating all things Edmonton. Edmonton seems to be your "Bête noire"; in your mind Calgary exceeds in every metric -- you don't see that in yourself?
Oilguy
Active Member
If this was straight up them moving their head office here I’d be partying away. But this is thousands of families and people having their livelihood taken away, oh and a few extra jobs for Edmonton. I just can’t feel good about that,
archited
Senior Member
^ I agree 1,000%
northlands
Senior Member
Agreed. If nothing else, we just saw one of Calgary’s (and Alberta’s, too) largest headquartered companies be dismantled just like that in front of our eyes. Yes, going to take 2-3 years for all of this to happen, but the fate was all but sealed yesterday. Unbelievably sad day for a lot of Calgarian/Albertan families, but also a clear indicator we need to rethink resource extraction policy in this country.
Straight from IOL CEO’s mouth: “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,”
IOL’s plans are to cut 20% staff, hopefully shed hundreds more from people refusing to move from Calgary to production sites, while all open roles are filled where able by outsourced workers in foreign nations. All while 70% of Imperial is owned by US based Exxon Mobil, who since Kearl was completed, has been squeezing every penny possible out of Imperial via dividends while reinvesting very little, particularly the last few years.
So what we’re about to be left with in <10 years is essentially a shell corporation with a few hundred jobs in Canada that is extracting tens of billions of dollars of our resources yearly while the vast majority of the profit vanishes instantly down south. Us Canadians get some paltry royalties and some corporate tax income (thanks JK for the 8% corpo tax!) while we’re left with the environmental liability.
Are we sure we’re doing this right? It at least made a bit more sense when we had a few thousand people employed here in Canada with high paying work and there was a few billion in capex yearly being spread around in the province.
And I’m saying this as someone who supports and is generally proud of our oil and gas industry.
David A
Senior Member
Well there is a complicated history here. Lets start by noting Calgary was celebrating when Imperial Oil moved its head office there. Of course then those jobs were lost to another city and this is exactly what is happening now.
There were also head offices over the year that were moved from Edmonton to Calgary and jobs were lost here. So maybe for some of us here it is hard to be too sad when the predator becomes the prey.
EdmTrekker
Senior Member
That would be Imperial Oil.
Chat GTP: "Imperial Oil relocated its head office from Edmonton to Calgary in 2004. This move was part of a broader strategy to consolidate operations and align more closely with ExxonMobil's corporate structure, as Imperial Oil is majority-owned by ExxonMobil. In 2017, Imperial Oil further modernized its presence in Calgary by moving into a new, campus-style office complex in the Quarry Park neighborhood. This facility was designed to foster collaboration and innovation among its employees. However, as of September 2025, Imperial Oil announced plans to cut approximately 20% of its workforce by the end of 2027. As part of this restructuring, the company intends to largely exit Calgary, relocating most of its remaining head office roles to Edmonton and Sarnia, Ontario. A small presence in Calgary will remain after the transition."
There is no information how many jobs were lost in Edmonton and Strathcona in 2004 as Imperial Oil was silent on job transfer or termination numbers.
Gronk!
Senior Member
Many of us old timers still remember when Shaw vacated Edmonton for Calgary during the mid-90s.