Published: May 11, 2016 |

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In the same way fire creeps slowly at first before reaching a flaming crescendo, so the news story of Alberta, Canada’s biggest wild fire is playing out.

On Friday, the flames were engulfing an area 1,010 sq km, and the word is that could double by Saturday. It is certainly one of the biggest current trending stories across all platforms.

It has put the province of Alberta in Western Canada into chaos and analysts reckon has taken around 1.1 million barrels of oil from the oil sands industry there out of production, hence the rise in the crude price. That is around half of Alberta’s daily oil production.

Alberta oil prices also rallied, with the marker Western Canada Select up almost $3 to $33.83 a barrel — reportedly the highest level since October last year.

But of course the knock-ons affect the whole Canadian economy and the Bank of Montreal has already lowered the country’s growth projections for the second quarter in response

In terms of some companies, Husky Energy Inc, earlier this week, cut production at its Sunrise oil sands project by a third to 10,000 bpd from 30,000 after a pipeline was closed.

Meanwhile, Suncor Energy Canada’s largest oil producer, said it had issued various force majeure notes to those suppliers and customers affected.

Source: (May 9, 2016) Proactive Investors

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