OREANDA-NEWS. Canadian sulphur producers took more production offline over the weekend as forest fires raged in northern Alberta.

The blaze is moving away from the core of the oil sands sands industry but when production will be able to resume is not clear.

Syncrude Canada, the leading Canadian oil sands sulphur producer, is completely offline after initially pouring to block in response to the evacuation of Fort McMurray. The site has been completely evacuated, the company said, but restart plans are being put together. The consortium produced 611,000t of sulphur in 2015.

Suncor said yesterday that there has been no damage to its assets and it is beginning to implement a plan for a return to operations. Chief executive Steve Williams said Suncor expects to safely ramp up its assets within days.

Suncor shut down its two main oil sands operations which feed its upgrader last week. Suncor produced 528,000t of sulphur via oil sands processing in 2015.

While Alberta agriculture and forestry officials said the fire could take months to fully extinguish, the cooler weather conditions and work by hundreds of firefights has helped them contain it. There were no estimates about when it would be safe for people to return to the city and the region.

Provincial representatives said CNOOC subsidiary Nexen Canada's Long Lake thermal operation, about 45km southeast of Fort McMurray, appears to have suffered minor damage from the fire. The operation had been running at reduced capacity since a fatal explosion in January and produced 115,000t of sulphur in 2015.

Royal Dutch Shell, Husky, Statoil, Imperial Oil and Connacher Oil and Gas were also among the oil sands producers that shut down or reduced output as they evacuated workers and dealt with pipeline and diluent constraints. Total sulphur production from the oil sands was over 2mn t in 2015.

The shut ins will reduce supply to both the US domestic sulphur market and Vancouver for the international market for the foreseeable future. It remains to be seen how much the tightening will impact what has been a long North American sulphur balance in 2016.