Some oil and gas companies in Canada’s main crude-producing province Alberta were forced to re-curtail output as record-high temperatures and tinder-dry vegetation led to an intense, early start to wildfire season in western Canada this year.
At one point the fires pushed more than 30,000 people out of their homes while oil and gas producers shut in at least 319,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd), or 3.7% of national production.
Following are the latest from Canadian energy companies:
The company said about 26,000 boepd is shut-in, and over the last two weeks it has fluctuated between 12,000 boepd and 40,000 boepd shut-in at any given time.
The Calgary-based energy company said that about 20,000 boepd of production has been temporarily curtailed since the evening of May 12.
The company said that it has shut its operated and non-operated production of about 2,500 boepd in Kaybob and Swan Hills areas.
The company said it has shut-in its Kaybob Duvernay production due to the ongoing wildfires.
A portion of this production was reactivated last week, however, Crescent Point is temporarily shutting back-in the remainder of its 45,000 boepd of production in the area as a precautionary measure.
Baytex said ongoing wildfires are impacting its operations in the Peace River and Peavine regions of northwest Alberta.
About 20,000 boepd of production has been shut-in since the morning of May 13. In addition, in west-central Alberta, approximately 4,000 boepd remains shut-in since the evening of May 5 as a result of the shut-in of third-party infrastructure.
Obsidian said it took the Peace River area fields at Seal, Walrus and Nampa offline on May 12 and shut-in the Peace River Harmon Valley South field on May 14.
The Harmon Valley South field was being restarted. The company added that about 1,200 boepd of production in Peace River would remain temporarily curtailed until the remaining wildfire threat had subsided.
The company said it had shut-in two of its facilities at Kaybob and added it estimated about 2,300 boepd of temporary production downtime.
Cenovus said about 85,000 boepd of production, primarily dry gas, had been impacted in the company’s Rainbow Lake, Kaybob-Edson, Elmworth-Wapiti and Clearwater operating areas.
Paramount said a third-party gas processing plant and some Paramount fields were shut due to the fires, and it had curtailed 45,000 boepd.
The company said it had temporarily shut in and depressured all operations proximal to the ongoing fires in the Grande Prairie region. The temporary production impact is about 40,000 boepd.
Vermilion said it had restored about 60% of the 30,000 boepd of production that was temporarily shut-in.
As a result of production being offline, the Canadian energy producer expects second-quarter production to average 80,000 boepd to 83,000 boepd, compared with a previous forecast of 84,000 boepd to 86,000 boepd.
The oil and gas producer said its second-quarter production would see a reduction between 1,000 boepd and 2,000 boepd.
It had earlier shut down two plants in the Brazeau area as a precautionary measure, but major infrastructure was not damaged by the wildfire.
The company said seven of its nine facilities, which were shut-in due to the wildfires, had started operation. The net production shut-in from these two facilities is about 16,000 boepd.
The company said about two-thirds of Kiwetinohk’s Placid production had been restored and about 18,000-20,000 boepd of Kiwetinohk’s total production was currently impacted.
The Canadian energy transportation company said that all of its facilities which had shut down had resumed operations and the company hadn’t seen any damages.
Its Saturn I and II gas plants with a combined processing capacity of 443 million cubic feet per day were shut down.
The company said it had restarted all compressor units that were shut down due to wildfire precautions.