Spain’s Repsol cuts 30% of Canadian staff in global restructuring

Spanish energy company Repsol SA is cutting about 30% of its Canadian workforce as part of global restructuring, the company said in an emailed statement on Tuesday.

Repsol joins a string of large international energy companies that have either reduced exposure to Canada or exited the country's oil sands sector to focus investment elsewhere.

Delays in building new export pipelines has slowed Canadian oil and gas development and capped growth in output in the world's fourth-largest crude producer.

Repsol said it had cut staff in its Calgary, Chauvin and Edson offices.

The company declined to detail the exact number of cuts from its Canadian workforce, which numbered about 700 at the end of 2018, according to the company website.

Employees in the Canadian exploration and production and corporate units affected by the reorganization will be informed this week, according to company sources and an internal memo seen by Reuters.

"Unfortunately, as I already mentioned, there is not a role for everyone," Paul Ferneyhough, Repsol's executive director of North America, said in the memo this week.

Repsol has liquids and gas assets and conventional heavy oil operations in western Canada, primarily in the province of Alberta.

Also this month, local media reported that Nexen, a subsidiary of Chinese state-owned oil giant China National Offshore Oil Corporation Ltd, laid off 100 people in Calgary.

(Reporting by Devika Krishna Kumar in New York and Nia Williams in Calgary, Alberta; editing by Leslie Adler and Grant McCool)