At the Kearl oil sands site north of Fort McMurray, Imperial Oil Ltd. has kept staffing to a minimum in recent days.Larry MacDougal
Oil sands operators have reduced staffing to only essential workers, warning them they may need to evacuate at short notice as wildfires spread across Alberta.
More than 170 fires were burning across the province Tuesday, 56 of which were out of control. The vast majority of wildfire activity in Alberta over the past week has been concentrated in the northern half of the province, including the area around Fort McMurray where the bulk of oil sands operations are located.
At the Kearl oil sands site north of Fort McMurray, Imperial Oil Ltd. IMO-T has kept staffing to a minimum in recent days. A 105,500-hectare blaze was on Tuesday burning 10 kilometres east of the site and the danger of more fires in the region remained at extreme levels.
The bulk of workers usually stay at the massive Wapasu camp near the site, but Imperial said in a notice to employees Tuesday that plans are in place for alternate lodgings should it be required. Imperial also encouraged workers to keep medications and other essential personal items in a bag ready to go “should we need to move fast.”
Imperial has also implemented a travel blackout to Kearl, with all new inbound travel requests refused. Workers scheduled to fly in have been warned they may have to cancel their travel plans at short notice.
The company has warned workers to be vigilant of wildlife and carry bear spray as wildfires push animals from their habitats.
Alberta Wildfire has applied fire retardant around power lines at the site. Imperial said in an e-mail to The Globe and Mail Tuesday that there has been no direct impact to production as a result of the fires.
Wildfires are also close to MEG Energy Corp.’s MEG-T Christina Lake facility, though the company said Tuesday that production levels remain steady.
Like Kearl, the site is operating with only essential staff.
In a statement on its website, MEG said it had implemented “comprehensive emergency response measures.” It said it continues to closely monitor the wildfire situation, and is in regular communication with Alberta Forestry and Parks and local authorities.
“By maintaining a proactive approach to safety and reducing our on-site workforce to essential personnel only, we have been able to safeguard our operations,” Darlene Gates, MEG president and chief executive officer, said in the statement.
Also operating with reduced staffing levels is Cenovus Energy Inc.’s Sunrise facility, about 60 kilometres north of Fort McMurray. The company said in an e-mail Tuesday there has been no impact to production at any of its oil sands facilities, but it is monitoring the fire situation.
Christie Tucker with Alberta Wildfire said Tuesday that while fires in the northeast of the province did not show significant growth over the weekend, the province is monitoring a potential shift in winds.
“That is going to change the direction and the intensity of the wildfires there, and we’re preparing for that,” Ms. Tucker told media.
“We’re going to be extremely aware of the potential threat to safety and the fact that we could see extreme wildfire behaviour in those areas.”
The massive wildfire that destroyed part of Fort McMurray in May, 2016, resulted in oil sands production losses as high as one million barrels a day at the height of the disaster. The production outage caused by the wildfire resulted in a 14-per-cent decline of crude oil exports loaded in Alberta.
The resulting economic impact was so severe that Canadian GDP contracted 0.4 per cent in the second quarter of 2016. Economists said GDP would have grown 0.1 per cent that quarter, were it not for the effect of wildfires on Canadian oil production.
Suncor Energy Inc. said in an e-mail Tuesday that wildfires do not pose any immediate risk to its operations or the Firebag Airport, but it is monitoring the situation.
In a disclosure document filed by the company last year, Suncor said while the likelihood of extreme weather events remains “unknown,” an extreme weather-forced shutdown of its massive Base Plant oil sands mine in northern Alberta for 10 days could cost the company $56-million a day owing to production losses.