Alberta oilpatch recruiting in Maritimes again as drilling set to rise in 2022
BNN Bloomberg
After seven years of layoffs and hard times, employers in Alberta's oilpatch are once again flush with cash and out to lure workers from the Maritimes and other parts of Eastern Canada.
CALGARY -- After seven years of layoffs and hard times, employers in Alberta's oilpatch are once again flush with cash and out to lure workers from the Maritimes and other parts of Eastern Canada.
The Canadian Association of Energy Contractors (CAOEC) said Tuesday it is expecting 6,457 oil and gas wells to be drilled in 2022, a more than 25 per cent increase from 2021.
"This is the good news story that we've been waiting for for seven years," Mark Scholz, CAOEC president and chief executive, told reporters at an industry event in Calgary. "This is the first time in a very, very long time that many of our small businesses -- who really quite frankly have been on the edge of insolvency and bankruptcy -- (are receiving) that message of hope that many people have been waiting for."
Global prices for natural gas and oil are higher than they've been since 2014, the last boom year for Alberta before a price collapse caused widespread bankruptcies and layoffs in the energy sector and plunged the province into recession.
While drilling activity next year isn't expected to reach 2014 heights, strong commodity prices combined with progress on export capacity projects like the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion and Coastal GasLink means the industry is feeling optimistic for the first time in many years. The CAOEC expects increased drilling activity in 2022 to create 35,000 new jobs in Western Canada, an increase of 7,200 jobs year-over-year.
With that increased activity comes a return to something Alberta has traditionally been good at -- recruiting eastern Canadians with the lure of vacant jobs and large paycheques. Scholz said a significant portion of the sector's workforce historically came from Newfoundland, the Maritimes, Ontario and Quebec, but many of those workers returned home in recent years due to a shortage of jobs as well as the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
