Alberta’s Growing $30-Billion Liability: Inactive Wells

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Alberta’s Growing $30-Billion Liability: Inactive Wells

[ https://thetyee.ca/News/2017/02/13/Inac ... ign=130217 ]

Compared to other jurisdictions, province lets oil firms off the hook when it comes to cleaning up.

By Andrew Nikiforuk , | TheTyee.ca February 13, 2017

Andrew Nikiforuk is an award-winning journalist who has been writing about the energy industry for two decades and is a contributing editor to The Tyee. Find his previous stories here: [ https://thetyee.ca/Bios/Andrew_Nikiforuk/ ]

Alberta has among the continent’s most permissive policies on cleaning up inactive oil and gas wells, and that could saddle taxpayers with more than $30 billion worth of liabilities [ http://www.aer.ca/data/facilities/LLR_Report.pdf ], according to a new report.

While most North American jurisdictions require companies to clean up and restore non-producing oil and gas wells in a timely fashion, Alberta doesn’t, says the report [ https://www.policyschool.ca/wp-content/ ... achs-1.pdf ]by University of Alberta economist Lucija Muehlenbachs, also a visiting fellow at the U.S. think tank Resources for the Future [ http://www.rff.org/ ].

Most jurisdictions require companies to shut down and clean up wells that have been inactive for specified periods. Alberta allows companies to say wells are “suspended” indefinitely.

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