A massive wildfire around the oil sands hub of Fort McMurray, Alberta, has moved toward energy production facilities, extending a shutdown that has led to lost Canadian output of one million barrels a day.
The fire jumped a critical firebreak area where plants and trees had been removed to stop its spread late on Monday (local time), moving north of Fort McMurray into oil sand camp areas. About 8000 workers were evacuated in the heavily forested northern part of the province.
The wildfire was taking a toll on the province's economy, with one study estimating the lost oil production would cut gross domestic product (GDP) by more than C$70 million (NZ$79.6 million) a day.
The uncontrolled blaze covered 355,000 hectares, up from 285,000 hectares on Monday. High temperatures and winds were working against firefighters, officials said.
None of the oil sands have caught fire, and the industry was redoubling efforts to ensure facilities were well-protected, said Alberta wildfire manager Chad Morrison.
"Experience has taught us because of the cleared vegetation, lots of gravel on site and because they have an industrial firefighting service on site that understands this ... we feel fairly confident the sites themselves will be okay," Morrison told a news conference.
The lost Canadian production of 1 million barrels a day represents about one-quarter of total Canadian output. Global oil prices touched a six-month high on Tuesday, with the Canadian outages among factors lending support.
Alberta Premier Rachel Notley said westerly winds were expected to push the fire closer to facilities operated by Suncor Energy Inc, one of the area's biggest operators, and Syncrude, majority owned by Suncor, on Tuesday.
Suncor started a staged and orderly shutdown of its base plant operations, while Syncrude has evacuated the majority of its workforce to Edmonton but left a minimum staff of about 100 people at its Mildred Lake upgrader and Aurora Mine.
The fire also threatened Enbridge Inc's Cheecham crude oil tank farm south of Fort McMurray, but Notley said the fire line built there has held and winds were blowing away from the facility.
TransAlta Corp's Poplar Creek cogeneration power plant, which provides power to Suncor, was also shut by early Tuesday due to the wildfire.
Prior to the latest setback, lost oil production was expected to average about 1.2 million barrels a day for 14 days, or roughly C$985 million in lost real GDP, according to the Conference Board of Canada.
Notley said the Conference Board's numbers were in the range of the government's estimates.
The premier added that the province has not underestimated the fire and had the resources to fight the fire.
Canada has declined help from allies including the United States and Australia. Federal Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said Ottawa had full confidence in Alberta's ability to fight the blaze.
Fort McMurray's roughly 90,000 residents were forced to flee nearly two weeks ago as the fire raged through neighbourhoods and destroyed about 10 percent of the city's structures.
With new explosions in the city damaging 10 homes and hot spots still a risk, Notley is not yet allowing residents to return.
Roughly a million barrels per day of oil sands crude production was shut down as a precaution and because of disruptions to regional pipelines. Much of that production remains offline.
