A new Alberta program will allow affected neighbours to call for companies to remediate oil and gas well sites
As Alberta wrestles with a $30 billion unfunded oil and gas infrastructure clean-up bill, a new program is set to begin in early 2023 that will allow landowners, municipalities and Indigenous groups to nominate wells to be remediated at the company owner’s expense.
Alberta’s Closure Nomination Program (CNP) will allow stakeholders with oil and gas infrastructure on their land, not including pipelines, to suggest an unlimited number of sites to be cleaned up if they meet eligibility requirements.
Those requirements include sites that have been inactive or abandoned in the province for five years or more and are not reclamation certified or exempt.
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While the program has yet to open to applications, more than 1,400 sites that qualified under the billion dollar, federally funded Site Rehabilitation Program (SRP) that was part of Ottawa’s COVID relief package have already been transferred to the industry-funded CNP.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said during her Oct. 11 news conference, that was done despite federal dollars being left on the table.
“Sadly, I don’t think we spent all the money we were allocated just because of some internal inefficiencies that developed,” said Smith of the federally funded clean-up program administrated by the Alberta Energy ministry. “But I don’t think we want to lose any of that momentum.”
The SNP ends in February 2023 with the province having closed applications for that program in March 2022.
Applications for the CNP will open sometime in early 2023.
The CNP will manage the program through three avenues; baseline closures that are considered routine, non-baseline closures that have more complex issues in remediation and non-closures, which the well licensee will be required to justify.
The Alberta Energy Regulator has set mandatory closure spending targets for the oil and gas sector to complete remediation work. Some $700 million is to be spent in 2023 and that amount is expected to increase yearly to nearly $1 billion in 2027.
In a two-sentence statement to The Western Producer about CNP, Trevor Gosselin, AER director of transfers, said the CNP is one of several liability management initiatives put in place to tackle the ongoing risks and costs associated with inactive infrastructure.
“The (AER) wants landowners and Indigenous communities, municipalities to participate in this program because it is one of the very few ways they can have an active role in decreasing the amount of inactive and abandoned infrastructure in the province,” read Gosselin’s statement.
A request to Alberta’s Farmers’ Advocate, Peter Dobbie, for comment on the CNP and other programs like it, drew a response from an agriculture department spokesperson, who said the office would not comment.
The Alberta Farmers Advocate mandate is to assist, “in the resolution of disputes, provides timely information to the farming community on matters of concern, and advocates on behalf of rural landowners by bringing their concerns and ideas to decision-makers.”
The third of AER’s online engagement sessions on the CNP will be held on Oct. 25 with the focus on landowners, municipalities and disposition holders who can register for the event at Events | Alberta Energy Regulator (aer.ca).
Engagement sessions were held for industry on Sept. 28 and Indigenous communities on Oct. 18 and are posted on the AER website.
