Companies including Chevron Corp., Paramount Resources Ltd. and Crescent Point Energy Corp. also have announced shutdowns, and consultant Rystad Energy estimates that the equivalent of about 240,000 barrels of daily production — and perhaps more than 300,000 barrels — has been shut due to the fires. 

So far, the blazes have mostly struck the gas-producing region of western Alberta. But ConocoPhillips said on Wednesday that it evacuated and then returned non-essential workers to the Surmont oil-sands site because of a wildfire nearby. Surmont produced about 143,000 barrels a day in March. 

Conditions are expected to worsen heading into the weekend, raising the possibility of even more blazes, Christie Tucker, a spokeswoman for Alberta Wildfire, said during a media briefing Wednesday. 

“It will get hotter and drier as we head to the weekend, and as we’ve seen, that can lead to more active wildfire behavior,” she said.
 

Eoin Treacy's view

The breaking of California’s drought has overshadowed the very dry conditions in much of the centre of the North American continent. This is very early in the season for wildfires to be such a problem in Alberta, and hard winter wheat is withering in states like Kansas.