Update: Canadian Wildfires In Oil Sands Area; Peak Oil? What Peak Oil -- Norway Has More Oil Than Ever Before-- May 28, 2015

Reuters via Rigzone is reporting:

A wildfire raging in northeastern Alberta near two major oil sands projects nearly doubled in size to 17,000 hectares on Wednesday, although firefighters made some progress tackling blazes elsewhere in the oil-rich Western Canadian province.

The fires have forced energy companies operating in Alberta, the largest source of U.S. oil imports, to shut in 233,000 barrels per day of production, or roughly 10 percent of total oil sands output.

Scott Long of the Alberta Emergency Management Agency said the fire on the Canadian military's Cold Lake Air Weapons Range, near the oil sands projects, was still out of control even though 250 firefighters were battling to contain it.

It advanced on Cenovus Energy Inc's Foster Creek project and Canadian Natural Resources Ltd's Primrose oil sands facilities, both of which were shut down and evacuated over the weekend after the blaze, which began on Friday, closed the only access road to the sites.

Peak oil? What peak oil? Norway has more oil than it had a decade ago. Rigzone is reporting:

The Norwegian Petroleum Directorate reported Wednesday that current recoverable oil on the Norwegian Continental Shelf exceeds the estimated figure for 2005.

A select number of producing fields and 62 discoveries, for which development decisions had not been made in 2005, were reviewed in order to determine the latest figures.

Over the course of the ten-year period, 28 of these discoveries were developed and their oil reserves have nearly doubled.

The NPD has attributed this to new information, better reservoir understanding and optimization of development solutions and drainage strategies.

Discoveries made after 2004 also led to development decisions for 13 new fields, according to the NPD, which have contributed an overall resource growth totaling 2.8 billion standard cubic feet of oil. The Edvard Grieg, Ivar Aasen and Knarr fields account for more than 75 percent of this volume. The NPD’s latest review was a way to track the agency’s goal from 2005, which was to achieve an oil reserve growth of 28 billion cubic feet, or five billion barrels, over ten years. Although the reserve growth turned out to be significantly less, the goal would have been reached if the development plan for Johan Sverdrup had been submitted before the end of 2014, instead of February 2015.

Remember, the Bakken was pretty much "discovered" in 2000 (Montana) and then, again, in 2007 (North Dakota). That's about the same time period as the Norway story (2005) above. Imagine what the numbers might show if the USGS re-evaluates the Bakken in ten years, let's say, 2017.