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by Stockwatch Business Reporter

West Texas Intermediate crude for June delivery added 59 cents to $48.31 on the New York Merc, while Brent for July added 31 cents to $49.28 (all figures in this para U.S.). Western Canadian Select traded at a discount of $12.45 to WTI ($35.86), down from a discount of $11.85. Natural gas for June added 1.9 cents to $2.048. The TSX energy index added 1.81 points to close at 186.33.

The massive Fort McMurray fire continues to spread. Two weeks after the city's nearly 90,000 residents were forced to flee, the 355,000-hectare fire shows no signs of stopping, and jumped an important firebreak obstacle late yesterday to head north toward oil sands work camps and production facilities. This led the province to issue a mandatory evacuation order for the area. Nineteen work camps and as many as 8,000 people are affected by the order, reports The Globe and Mail, including Suncor Energy Inc. (SU: $35.12), which said this morning that it is complying with the order and shutting down its base plant operations in the regional municipality of Wood Buffalo. Syncrude Canada has also evacuated many of its workers north of Fort McMurray, while Shell is not in the evacuation zone but says it is making plans to move workers if necessary. Prior to these developments, lost oil production was expected to average about 1.2 million barrels a day for 14 days, equating to roughly $985-million in lost real GDP, according to a report from the Conference Board of Canada. The report saw "only a slightly negative impact" to Alberta's economy in the third quarter. Now that conclusion may have to be revisited. "This is quite an unexpected U-turn in events," Jackie Forrest, vice-president of energy research at ARC Financial Corp., told BNN, adding, "It's realistic to think this outage is going to last about another couple of weeks."

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