Wildfires have forced many oil and gas companies to halt their operations in Alberta as the fires continue to stretch across much of the province, leading to a state of emergency.
Since Thursday, 29,000 people have been evacuated from their homes, including areas where oil and gas companies operate like Brazeau and Grande Prairie.
The fires are threatening to pull 145,000 barrels of oil per day from the market according to estimates.
Major companies like Cenovus Energy Inc. have had to close down production at natural gas sites in the wildfire area.
Fires have stretched across nearly 391,000 hectares this season. At the same time last year, there were fires only covering 417 hectares.
Additionally, Pipestone Energy Corp. had to shutter its doors at various production facilities totaling to about 20,000 barrels lost per day. Paramount Resources Ltd. too has dropped in production by about 50,000 barrels a day.
As for Crescent Point, the company has shut-in production amounting to about 45,000 barrels a day – equalling a 29% production drop at its Kaybob Duvernay facility.
Similarly, Kiwetinokh Energy said it had to shutter a majority of its work in Placid because of how close the wildfires were.
“We appreciate the hard work of emergency responders protecting our communities and seek to reduce any Kiwetinohk-related traffic in our areas of operations to provide priority to emergency respondents if and when needed,” Kiwetinohk Energy told the Globe and Mail.
Alberta Wildfire manager, Christie Tucker called the incident “unprecedented” with emergency crews tackling many different fires over a vast swathe of land.
“People have called this season certainly unprecedented in recent memory because we have so many fires so spread out,” said Tucker.
