Canadian Oil And Gas Producers Restart Production As Wildfires Abate

• Earlier this month, wildfires in Canada caused 319,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day to be shut-in, about 3.7% of national production.
• While the wildfires began raging again last week, rainfall has helped put a stop to the worst of it and production is resuming.
• Fears that a substantial amount of oilsands production would be shut in are now fading, with companies bringing production back online.

Canadian oil and gas producer Crescent Point Energy Corp on Monday said it had brought back online full production volumes at its operations in the Kaybob Duvernay play that were shut in due to the wildfires in Alberta in the past few weeks.

Several other operators in Alberta have also resumed partial production after rainfalls helped stop some of the wildfires in recent days.

Following a brief respite in the middle of May, the wildfires in Alberta began raging again last week as temperatures rose, threatening the oil sands operations in the province and forcing operators to shut in oil and gas production.  

Earlier this month, the wildfires in Canada resulted in the shut-in of 319,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd) from the country’s oil and natural gas production or 3.7% of all output.

Most of those shut-ins and subsequent resumption of production concerned gas output early this month, but as the situation with wildfires in Northern Alberta deteriorated, the oil sands production was threatened.

Rystad Energy has warned that nearly 2.7 million barrels per day of Alberta oil sands production is in “very high” or “extreme” wildfire danger rating zones in the month of May.

But at the end of last week, heavy rains helped the situation, and operators started restoring part of the previously shut-in production.

Crescent Point Energy said today it had brought back on stream the full 45,000 boe/d of Kaybob Duvernay production previously shut-in due to the Alberta wildfires.

Last week, Chevron Canada said it had safely resumed partial operations in the Kaybob Duvernay outside the active fire area, although it continues to monitor the evolving wildfire situation in Northern Alberta.

Obsidian Energy said it had restored 5,650 boe/d of operated and non-operated production that was temporarily shut in due to wildfires, evacuation orders, and third-party constraints in Peace River and Pembina.

By Michael Kern for Oilprice.com

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