Canadian wildfire approaches oil tank farm

  • 17/05/2016
Canadian wildfire approaches oil tank farm

A massive wildfire burning around the oil sands hub of Fort McMurray, Alberta, is about a kilometre away from Enbridge Inc's Cheecham crude oil tank farm, but is under control for now, emergency officials say.

The blaze near the tank farm was stable because the wind was co-operating as Enbridge's industrial firefighters tackled the blaze, the officials said at a news conference on Monday.

The entire population of Fort McMurray, about 90,000 people, were forced to flee the Canadian city nearly two weeks ago as the uncontrolled wildfire raged through some neighbourhoods and destroyed about 15 percent of structures.

Alberta Premier Rachel Notley said there was still no timeline on when residents could return but she hoped to have more information by the end of the week.

Officials said the air quality in the city had deteriorated, with the air quality health index, usually measured on a scale of 1-10, at 38 on Monday.

"This has delayed the re-entry of additional response personnel as well as vehicle retrieval efforts," Notley said.

Roughly a million barrels per day of oil sands crude production was shut in as a precaution and because of disruptions to regional pipelines, and much of that production remains offline.

Reuters