Evacuation Warning Issued as Wildfire Nears Oil Sands Hub in Canada

A wildfire in the vicinity of Fort McMurray in Alberta has prompted the local authorities to issue a warning that local residents must be ready to evacuate if the fire continues expanding.

That’s according to Bloomberg, which reported that the fire was raging near a town 25 miles from Fort McMurray. The report recalled that eight years ago another wildfire forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of locals and the suspension of some 1 million barrels of oil in daily production.

There were production shut-ins in Canada last year as well, because of wildfires. In March of that year, over 300,000 bpd of daily production were shut in because of the fires, representing 3.7% of total output. At the time, there were 110 active wildfires across Alberta, of which 36 were out of control.

Some of these fires are still burning, according to government data, with media labeling them “zombie fires”. These appeared to have remained alive even during the winter, burning below the snow thanks to the abundance of peat moss.

Zombie fires are nothing unusual but, according to some reports, their number this year is the unusual part. According to a BBC report from February, most zombie fires die out by spring but this year, January saw 106 of them still active.

This has prompted worry about an even more devastating wildfire season in Canada although some of them were linked to arson.

Last year, wildfires began subsiding by early May, helped by spring rains. However, Rystad Energy warned at the time that nearly 2.7 million barrels per day of Alberta oil sands production was in “very high” or “extreme” wildfire danger rating zones in the month of May. Alberta produced some 3.8 million bpd in total over most of 2023. In November alone, the daily average rose to an all-time high of 4.2 million barrels daily.

By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com

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