Wildfires Encircle Canada’s Oil-Sands City Amid Hot Weather

A ring of wildfires has erupted around Canada’s unofficial oil-sands capital of Fort McMurray, adding new threats to crude production from the world’s third-largest petroleum reserves.

Eight out-of-control blazes have been discovered just south and southwest of the city since Wednesday, Alberta Wildfire data show. Those add to the three burning to the north, where the region’s main oil-sands mines are located.

A blast of hot, dry weather across Alberta in recent days kicked up a series of new blazes across the province’s remote northern reaches, with almost a dozen surrounding the roughly 70,000-person city of Fort McMurray.

While the new fires are still well outside the city’s limits, one to the northeast prompted Suncor Energy Inc. to curtail production from its 231,000-barrel-a-day Firebag oil-sands site. That blaze, which is 28,000 hectares (69,000 acres) in size, experienced minimal growth to the southeast and slightly to the west Wednesday. Extreme fire behavior is expected Thursday with the most intense winds forecast for between 4 p.m. and 8 p.m., when fire growth is likely to happen.

Fort McMurray, the largest population center near Canada’s massive oil-sands operations, was devastated by a blaze in 2016 that forced thousands to evacuate and temporarily shut more than 1 million barrels of daily oil output. The city was partially evacuated in May because of an approaching wildfire.

Even after the recent flareup, Alberta is having a far milder wildfire season than last year’s record-breaking onslaught. The province has seen 690 fires this year, compared with 840 at this point in 2023. The difference in area burned is even wider, with about 183,000 hectares (452,000 acres) affected so far in 2024, less than a 10th of the total by this point last year. Temperatures are forecast to cool slightly in northern Alberta Thursday after exceeding 30C (86F) on Wednesday.

The eastern, French-speaking province of Quebec — where a series of fires last year released smoke that darkened the skies over New York — currently has 74 fires burning. Natural Resources Canada is showing extreme fire danger in northern Quebec, but only low to moderate danger in most of the province.

So far this year, about 16,000 hectares have burned in Quebec’s southern zone, where most of the population resides, compared with more than 1 million hectares in that area burned by this point last year, according to provincial data.

In Alberta, wildfires also are posing a threat to gas output. Natural gas sites that produce the equivalent of about 30,000 barrels a day of oil have out-of-control fires within 10 kilometers (6 miles), according to Alberta Energy Regulator production data. In addition to Suncor, companies with the most production near out-of-control blazes include Spartan Delta Corp., TAQA North Ltd., Westbrick Energy Ltd. and Sunshine Oilsands Ltd. None of these companies immediately responded to requests for comment.

Photograph: Scenes from the 2016 wildfire near Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada’s unofficial oil-sands capital. Photo credit: Darryl Dyck/Bloomberg