Suncor To Ramp Up Oil Production As Fire Dies; Cuts Upstream Guidance

(RTTNews) - Canada's major oil producer Suncor Energy Inc. is planning to be back on full steam in a staged manner after a drastic cut on its production due to wild fire in Fort McMurray of Alberta. Suncor is planning to return to pre-fire production rates in a week's time and attain normal pre-turnaround rates by the end of June.

The oil giant has reduced its annual upstream production to 585 to 620 thousand barrels per day or bbls/d, from its earlier projection of 620 to 665 thousand bbls/d. Synthetic crude oil sales is now projected to be between 265 thousand and 275 thousand bbls/d. Updated guidance for exported bitumen is in a range 100 to 120 thousand bbls/d and Syncrude production between 105 thousand to 115 thousand, excluding planned acquisition. Meanwhile exploration and production guidance were raised to 105 to 110 thousand bbls/d.

The company had to shut down Oilsands production after Fort McMurray area was swallowed by huge fire. It had cut down 300 thousand barrels of production per day.

The company said Suncor Business center is safe and open to work, while work is still underway to get the building fully operational. Air quality monitoring is going on, on a daily basis at multiple locations.

Steve Williams, Suncor president and chief executive officer said, "We safely returned thousands of people and restarted our operations in a safe manner."

Suncor noted that the construction works at its Fort Hills mine is back to pre-fire levels. Syncrude is expecting full ramp up of production after completion of the scheduled turnaround by mid-July.