Editor:
Well, at last, the UCP has come up with a plan to solve Alberta’s abandoned/orphaned wells.
More than three years ago, Premier Danielle Smith wrote in a column in the Calgary Herald “I have a suggestion (Jason Kenney) could be the premier who solves the well-site reclamation problem,” and further “when wells leak they make a heckuva mess.”
Smith was proposing to offer a royalty credit.
That same year, a report from the University of Calgary stated that the costs were unfairly falling on landowners and taxpayers. The number of abandoned and inactive oil and gas wells is increasing exponentially.
A spokeswoman for Alberta Energy said that the Conservative government has taken “the boldest action in generations” to address the problem. New rules were being made to ensure that companies that take over old wells have the money to remediate them.
And that year due to a dip in oil prices, Energy Minister Sonya Savage reduced payments that firms make into the oilsands cleanup fund.
Fast forward to this year, and a new publication by the Alberta Energy Regulator declared “The results of this report are a robust and clear indication that the industry is improving in cleanup of oil and gas wells”. One billion dollars of that cleanup came from the federal government.
A new report from the University of Calgary called the above-mentioned report a “sales job” and “a massive regulatory failure”.
So, what is the solution Energy Minister Brian Jean has come up with? We are going to pay for them, that’s right – public funds. He had already made the decision to relax rules that require taxes to be paid on wells.
“It’s important to me to make certain industry is responsible for its own messes,” he said. But the industry may need a little help from public finances to live up to its legal obligations.
Marilyn Foxford,
Canmore
