Producers of oil and gas in Canada’s Alberta province have started to bring operations back online after rainfall caused wildfires in the area to abate.
The raging wildfires had threatened operators working in the province’s oil sands, with the country’s oil and gas production decreasing by 319,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd), which is almost 4% of the country’s total production. More importantly, almost 2.7 million barrels per day in production was located in zones that were classed as either at “extreme” or “very high” risk of wildfires.
The fortunate arrival of heavy rains has helped the situation, though, and allowed operators to resume production. The Canadian arm of Chevron, which makes the Texaco range of lubricant products, said in a statement that it had restarted some operations at one site:
“Chevron Canada has safely resumed partial operations in the Kaybob Duvernay outside the active fire area; however, we continue to monitor the evolving wildfire situation in Northern Alberta. Chevron Canada’s primary focus is the safety and well-being of our personnel, the community and emergency responders.”
The statement added that operations in the zones affected by fire would only resume once it was deemed safe to do so. Crescent Point Energy and Obsidian Energy also said they had restored 45,000 boepd and 5,650 boepd in production, respectively.
While the rain has no doubt helped efforts to control the fires, some 18 different fires were still classed as out of control by officials at the time of writing.
