Alberta Producers Restart Oil and Gas Operations as Wildfires Ease

A number of oil and gas companies in Canada’s main crude-producing province Alberta restarted shuttered production on Wednesday as wildfires that had sparked widespread evacuations eased.

Producers shut in at least 319,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd), or 3.7% of the country’s production, earlier this week as more than 100 fires ignited across Alberta, forcing nearly 30,000 people to flee their homes.

By Wednesday a couple of days of cooler weather in southern and central Alberta allowed firefighters to make progress in tackling the blazes, and for some oil and gas facilities to resume operations.

Crescent Point Energy shut in 45,000 boepd in the Kaybob Duvernay region in response to the wildfires but said it has since restored approximately 75% of that production with no damage reported to its assets.

The company “plans to fully restore the remaining production once it is safe to do so”, Crescent Point said in a news release.

Tourmaline Oil Corp said seven of its nine facilities that were shut in because of wildfires have resumed operations and are back to previous production rates.29dk2902l

Its two remaining facilities, representing about 16,000 boepd of production, are undamaged and waiting for clearance to restart from the Alberta government.

“The company expects the start-up of these two facilities to commence in the next several days,” Tourmaline said.

Canadian gas exports, which dipped earlier in the week, were on track to rise to 8.0 billion cubic feet per day on Wednesday, the most since May 4. That compares with average exports of about 8.5 bcfd since the start of the year.

(Reporting by Nia Williams in British Columbia, Sourasis Bose in Bengaluru and Scott DiSavino in New York; editing by Diane Craft)