Canada wildfires shut lumber mills, Enbridge gas compressor

Bloomberg

­­More than 300 wildfires in British Columbia have forced Canadian lumber mills and an Enbridge Inc. natural gas compressor station to shut as hot, dry weather fans blazes across swaths of west Canada and US.
Enbridge said that it has closed a compressor station on its T-South pipeline, which carries natural gas from northern B.C. to the US border.
Maintenance work in the affected area also has been halted, while emergency response plans are under way to protect facilities and workers, Enbridge spokesman Jesse Semko said in an email.
Wildfires have swept across the West, forcing thousands of evacuations across B.C., California and Colorado and prompting military personnel to mobilize on both sides of the border to help battle the flames.
Kinder Morgan Inc. said it was closely monitoring the fires and was taking preventative actions near its Trans Mountain crude pipeline in B.C., including “removing vegetation to create a fire break and adding sprinklers to keep the areas wet.” The company had said the blazes were in the “vicinity” of the pipeline.
Trans Mountain carries 300,000 barrels a day of crude oil and refined fuels from neighboring Alberta to the Vancouver area for export to the US Norbord Inc., the largest North American producer of oriented strand board used in residential construction, suspended production at its mill in 100 Mile House in central B.C. but stressed that, for now, the mill is safe.

‘IN A ZONE’
“We were in a zone that got evacuated night so we shut the mill down and that continues to be the situation,” Norbord Chief Financial Officer Robin Lampard said by phone. The Toronto-based company has 440 million square feet of annual production capacity. It hasn’t disclosed the cost per day of the shutdown, Lampard said.
West Fraser Timber Co., backed by billionaire Jim Pattison, said operations at three locations in B.C. — 100 Mile House, Williams Lake and Chasm — remain suspended.
West Fraser said it’s uncertain how long operations will be closed and is unable to assess the impact on lumber and plywood production. The facilities represent annual production capacity of 800mn board feet of lumber and 270mn square feet of plywood. Tolko Industries Ltd. said on its FB page its Williams Lake mills won’t be operating until further notice.