Hundreds of staff have been evacuated from three oil sands projects in northeastern Alberta as wildfires raged through the oil-rich fields, Reuters has reported.
The evacuated workers were employees of Norway’s Statoil and Canada’s MEG Energy and Cenovus.Â
The evacuations came in addition to project shutdowns by Cenovus over the weekend as companies rushed to protect people on site from getting hurt.
The Canadian oil firm evacuated all 90 staff from its Narrows Lake oil sands project on Tuesday, while Statoil removed around 110 non-essential employees from its 20,000 bpd Leismer project as a precaution, Reuters reports.
Production from Statoil’s field has not been affected with about 75% of employees remaining on site, The company said it does not anticipate shutting down operations.Â
“We will evacuate and pare down even further by Friday and keep the bare minimum of people on site,” a Statoil spokeswoman said.
At least 233,000 barrels per day of oil sands production, 9% of Alberta’s total oil sands output, have been suspended due to the fire risk, though none of the projects have been damaged, accoridng to Reuters.
