Husky shutting in hundreds of oil wells in lakeland to meet province’s curtailments, the producer says

Husky Energy is shutting-in hundreds of oil wells in the lakeland region and curtailing some production in the traditional heavy oil corridor from Cold Lake to Lloydminster to meet the province’s oil curtailment quota, the producer said on Tuesday.

The impact will hurt jobs for third-party service providers.

“The province gave a headline number of 8.7 per cent but for companies like ourselves, it’s more than double that. It’s requiring us to shut-in more production than we ever would’ve and unfortunately, this action cannot be undone,” said Mel Duvall, Senior Media and Issues Manager for Husky.

“We know this is going to impact a lot of third party service providers, contractors, and folks who drive the trucks that take the oil from the oil-heads to our hub in Lloydminster. We know there are impacts,” said Duvall.

Duvall added that Husky cannot specifically say what operations are being shut-in at this time, but did say that thermal operations, like the Tucker thermal plant in Cold Lake, will be curtailed.

“We have our Sunrise oil sands operation north of Fort McMurray and we also have the Tucker thermal plant in Cold Lake. We are curtailing some of the barrels from those operations. We can’t do it all from just those two. The amount we’re being told to curtail is too great to do it all from those two operations, so, unfortunately, we’re having to shut-in wells,” Duvall said.

The province’s Minister of Energy’s office said they will provide a comment tomorrow.

“We continue to talk to the province, they know impacts are taking place, they haven’t changed anything on our end yet, we remain hopeful our talks with the province may result in changes that could lessen the impacts being felt,” said Duvall.

Duvall added that Husky is a significant player in this region and will be in the future.

Recently, service provider, DLM Oilfield Services in Bonnyville and Elk Point, has shut its doors, a source told Lakeland Connect on Tuesday.

Husky Energy is releasing their 2018 fourth-quarter results on Feb. 26.