Oversize transport trailers typically barrel dangerously along Highway 63 as they deliver heavy loads of equipment and even prefabricated metal buildings to the multibillion-dollar oil sands projects that dominate this area. But more than a dozen such trailers, still full, now sit at pull-ins and rest stops, abandoned by drivers who unhitched their tractors and fled south on warnings of a devastating forest fire. As the fire ripped through Fort McMurray, oil companies severely pulled back or stopped pumping altogether. Production dropped by a million barrels a day, roughly 40 percent of Alberta’s output. While the oil markets have remained relatively stable and production is slowly picking up, the economic blow is significant to a region and a country already battered […]