An Alberta farmer wants an energy company to remove an abandoned pipeline that runs across her land.
“What happens 20 years down the road and the pipeline collapses. Am I responsible?” Phyllis Blackwell of Kelsey said during the Alberta Surface Rights Federation annual meeting in Camrose.
“I really want to get it pulled out because I know these things can cause quite a lot of damage.”
Blackwell said she received notice a few days before the Feb. 8 surface rights meeting that the Canadian National Resources pipeline will be formally abandoned. It hasn’t been used since 2003.
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The letter that Blackwell received from the energy company said the fluids will be removed and the ends and risers cut off and capped. However, the pipeline that runs the full length of a quarter section will not be removed.
“I want it pulled,” she said. “Apparently they can rust and corrode and be a real problem.”
Tony Nichols, president of the Alberta Surface Rights Federation, said he forced an energy company to remove an abandoned pipeline from his land a few years ago.
“I said, ‘you don’t have the right to leave that garbage on my land.’ After a lot of hollering and pushing, they dug it up,” Nichols said.
The four-inch pipeline came out of the ground “really easy,” he added.
Daryl Bennett of My Landman Group said the days of forcing companies to remove pipelines might be over.
In 2008, the Energy Resources Conservation Board added a policy that says companies don’t have to remove pipelines that cross farmland.
They may no longer be used for oil or gas distribution, but they may be used in the future for coal bed methane distribution.
“They know coal bed methane is coming,” Bennett said.
By leaving the pipeline infrastructure in place, companies would need to only install a liner and do minor repairs to the existing pipelines.
