A spreading wildfire in northern Alberta forced almost 900 more people to be evacuated overnight, adding to the 80,000 already relocated as an inferno around Fort McMurray destroyed homes and disrupted Western Canada’s oil-sands operations.
Changing weather patterns prompted Alberta’s provincial government Wednesday evening to evacuate two communities more than 22 miles (35 kilometers) south of Fort McMurray — Anzac and Gregoire Lake Estates — as well as Fort McMurray First Nation, according to a tweet by the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo.
The fire will probably grow to about 40 square miles (100 square kilometers) from around 80 now, Chad Morrison, a wildfire official, said Wednesday. Suncor Energy, Cnooc’s Nexen, Royal Dutch Shell and Husky Energy are among companies reducing production and opening work camps to residents fleeing blazes in Alberta’s biggest-ever evacuation caused by a fire. Inter Pipeline shut part of its system in the province. No deaths or injuries have been reported although 1,600 buildings have been damaged.
Many residents of oil-sands hub Fort McMurray fled north to nearby sites where companies are flying out workers and making room for evacuees. Shell has shut its 255,000 barrel-a-day Albian Sands mine and Suncor, Syncrude Canada and Connacher Oil & Gas have also reduced output from the region. More than 1 million barrels a day of oil sands production capacity may be affected by the blaze, according to company statements and data published in Alberta’s Spring Oil Sands Quarterly.
“My house and everything I own is gone,” Mike Marchand, a crane operator for Suncor, said in a phone interview from Edmonton, where he evacuated with his family after the trailer park where he lives in Fort McMurray went up in flames. “I’ve never had anything like this happen.”
The wildfire is the latest blow to a province already grappling with the economic toll of a two-year oil price slump in one of the world’s most expensive places to extract crude. More than 40,000 energy jobs have been lost in Canada since the price crash began in 2014. Some 250 firefighters, 10 helicopters and 17 air tankers have been deployed to fight the blazes around Fort McMurray, about 435 miles (700 kilometers) northeast of Calgary.
While lower temperatures may aid firefighters on Thursday, the blaze is expected to last at least until the weekend, Morrison said. The area will require years to recover, Scott Long, an emergency official, told reporters. In the hardest-hit Fort McMurray neighborhoods, between 50 percent and 90 percent of homes have been lost, officials said.
Suncor said it brought down its base plant while cutting output from its Firebag and MacKay River oil sands operations. Nexen shut its Long Lake facility, the company said on its website. The facility had already shut its 72,000 barrel-a-day upgrader and had reduced bitumen extraction after a Jan. 15 explosion.
