Enbridge cuts 5 percent of work force in Canada, U.S.

CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - Enbridge Inc, Canada's largest pipeline company, is laying off 5 percent of its work force after an organizational review, a spokeswoman said on Wednesday. The cuts will total 530 people, slashing 370 positions in Canada and 160 in the United States. Calgary-based Enbridge launched the organizational review in the first quarter of 2016, spokeswoman Suzanne Wilton said in an email. The reduction is not related to the company's $28 billion (C$37 billion) acquisition of Canadian pipeline operator Spectra Energy Corp, Wilton said, which Enbridge announced in September. The cuts come roughly three weeks after Enbridge announced a $1.075 billion sale of its South Prairie assets, which includes liquids pipelines and related facilities in Southeast Saskatchewan and southwest Manitoba. The latest layoffs are not the first employee cuts by Enbridge since oil prices fell into a two-year slump. Last November, Enbridge cut 5 percent of its workforce, which at the time represented about 500 positions in Canada and the United States, as well as 100 unfilled positions. Tens of thousands of jobs have been lost in both the Canadian and U.S. oil and gas sector since prices crashed in mid-2014. Enbridge recently became an investor in the embattled Dakota Access Pipeline, after ditching plans to build the proposed Sandpiper Pipeline through the U.S. Midwest in a joint venture with Marathon Petroleum. Construction on the Dakota Access, which will move crude from the Bakken shale to the Midwest and U.S. Gulf Coast, was halted in early September following protests from Native American groups. (Reporting by Nia Williams in Calgary and Liz Hampton in Houston; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe, Bernard Orr)