Enbridge Inc. on Friday said its second-quarter profit fell 48%, hurt by curtailed pipeline shipments after wildfires in May in Northern Alberta forced the shutdown of some oil-sands operations.

The Canadian pipeline company said increased capacity from new assets placed into service last year, including the expansion of its mainline system, was outweighed by the wildfires.

"While the wildfires tempered a record start to the year, the impact was transitory and is not expected to have a lasting effect," Chief Executive Al Monaco said in a release.

The massive wildfires forced the evacuation of the oil-sands hub of Fort McMurray, Alberta and surrounding areas and led to the suspension of some oil-sands production for several weeks. Suncor Energy Inc., which temporarily closed its main oil-sands mines because of the fires, blamed its recent second-quarter loss in part on production cuts related to the shutdown.

Enbridge said its deliveries fell about 10% in May and June from levels before the wildfire-related shutdowns, reducing earnings for the quarter ended June 30 by around 74 million Canadian dollars (about $56 million).

Overall, Enbridge said it earned C$301 million, or 33 Canadian cents a share, in its latest quarter, down from C$577 million, or 67 Canadian cents, a year earlier.

Adjusted to exclude items, it earned 50 Canadian cents a share, down from 60 Canadian cents a year earlier and a penny shy of what analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected.

Enbridge, the company behind the proposed Northern Gateway crude-oil pipeline, said Friday that its partners in the project remain committed to building the pipeline.

"The Aboriginal equity partners and our commercial project proponents remain fully committed to building this critical Canadian infrastructure project...," Mr. Monaco said.

At the end of June, Canada's Federal Court of Appeal overturned a 2014 government order approving Northern Gateway, which would carry 525,000 barrels a day of crude oil from Alberta to a marine terminal in British Columbia. The court ruling came a month after Enbridge asked the country's energy regulator for a three-year extension on the deadline to begin construction of the project.

Write to Judy McKinnon at judy.mckinnon@wsj.com

 

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 29, 2016 09:05 ET (13:05 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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