Alberta’s oil sands show signs of life
by investor on 22/06/09 at 1:33 pm
Unlimited overtime pay was just one of the many perks John Halbauer enjoyed as a welder during Alberta’s super-sized energy boom.
That’s disappeared, along with 11 of the 25-year-old’s 13 co-workers who got laid-off in January. “I was worried. I didn’t know if I was going to have to move back home or what,” the Kimberley, B.C., native said.
His employer, Harley’s Welding Inc., is located in Nisku, an industrial park south of Edmonton that caters to the province’s notoriously unpredictable oil and gas industry. Most companies were hit hard when the global economic crisis and plummeting energy prices side-swiped Alberta late last year.
But in recent weeks, Mr. Halbauer and many others in the province have noticed that the economy is slowly improving, especially in the northern half of Alberta.
“We are almost really busy. Work is rolling in,” Mr. Halbauer said.
Indeed, a run-up in oil prices and recent news that two oil sands projects, including Imperial Oil Ltd.’s $8-billion Kearl mine outside Fort McMurray, are going ahead has buoyed many.
But the optimism is guarded, and no one is predicting another unprecedented boom for Alberta, once the country’s hottest economy.
Earlier this year, Statistics Canada estimated that oil-sands spending will drop to $13.2-billion in 2009, down more than 30 per cent from last year. Billions worth of capital projects have either been scrapped or put on hold.
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