Calgary Conjures A Less Oily Future

Canada’s energy hub is chasing Amazon and airlines to plug the hole left by falling crude prices

- Katia Dmitrieva

Mark Craig didn’t worry much when the price of crude plunged from $100 a barrel to less than $50 in late 2014. As an oil industry veteran, the Calgary resident had seen booms and busts before. His confidence seemed justified when, just months after taking a buyout at British oil giant BP Plc, he was hired to manage the IT department at Penn West Petroleum in April 2015. Then, four months later, Penn West cut a quarter of its staff, including Craig. Oil had just begun to take another leg down, and no one in the city that’s the epicentre of Canada’s energy industry was hiring. They still aren’t. “After Penn West, I realised there were basically no jobs out there,” says Craig, 56.

As that reality sinks in, Craig—and Calgary—are having to retool. The unemployment rate in the province of Alberta, of which Calgary is the largest city, with about 1.5 million residents, was 7.3 percent in November, a full percentage point above the national average. The oil, gas, and mining industries employed about 143,000 workers in the province at the end of last month, down almost 40,000 from July 2014, when oil prices began their long slide. The job loss is visible in Calgary’s downtown, where the vacancy rate for office space is about 27 percent, according to brokerage CBRE Group Inc. Landlords are so desperate for tenants that the average rent they’re charging for the highest-quality space is cheaper than the lowest-quality space was in 2008.