Landowners continue to worry about abandoned wells, but the topic has barely been addressed during the campaign
The state of inactive oil and gas infrastructure left on farmers’ fields and ranchers’ pastures is a growing issue in Alberta, yet it is getting scant attention in the current general election.
During a campaign announcement in Okotoks south of Calgary, Devin Dreeshen, Innisfail-Sylvan Lake UCP candidate, outlined his party’s commitment to building up Alberta’s energy sector while trashing NDP policies.
Despite a large portion of rural areas supporting both the oil and gas sector and the UCP, which swept rural ridings in the last election, county governments and the agricultural sector are critical of the state of unpaid taxes and lease payments.
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Millions of outstanding tax payments have been written off by rural municipalities with hundreds of millions owing. Landowners have seen surface lease payments unilaterally diminished and, in many cases, not paid at all.
Many have pointed to the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) as the source of the problems for not enforcing provincial regulations.
Asked how a re-elected UCP government would address the concerns and whether it would stand with rural stakeholders on the issue, Dreeshen said, “yes is the short answer.”
He acknowledged the issue, stating inactive wells remain the responsibility of owners of the infrastructure but the UCP supports continued funding to see those problem sites cleaned up.
“There are some NDP candidates that want to stop that funding. They — I guess, assume — these sites will magically balance themselves or clean themselves up,” he said, adding billions of dollars in liabilities are at stake.
During a news conference the same day, Calgary NDP candidate Joe Ceci agreed with Dreeshen in stating his party does not want to see public funding go toward cleaning up privately owned environmental liabilities.
“I can tell you the things we won’t do are spend billions of dollars — giving it to profitable companies so that they can take care of their obligations that they should be taking care of under their own dime,” said Ceci.
Both candidates demurred on the question regarding reform to the AER, which has been criticized by landowners, rural municipalities and First Nations, as well as a recent Alberta auditor general report that supported many stakeholder claims.
“Stay tuned,” said Dreeshen in response to a question on whether the UCP will reform the AER if re-elected.
Dreeshen said the UCP has made progress on the issue over the past four years, giving credit to the billion dollars the federal government provided to clean up oil and gas sites.
But, he said, billions more will be required to address the issue.
“We’ve heard from reclamation companies, though, when it comes to prioritizing of who is getting these contracts and how they actually make sure they are getting the worst (sites) done first,” he said. “There are still billions of dollars in liabilities that need to be cleaned up and any type of improvements that we can see going forward of speeding that up is something that we will definitely be looking at.”
Ceci also wouldn’t address a direct question on AER reform and, like Dreeshen, stated more information on that question will be addressed later in the campaign.
“You’ll see these issues, as well as many others that are affecting rural Albertans, addressed there,” he said.
Albertans go to the polls May 29.
