Rugged Individualists Of Alberta Oil & Gas Industry Want $1 Billion In Taxpayer Well Cleanup Money
In the first four days after applications opened for companies to access $1.7 billion in federal funding to clean up inactive wells in Alberta, the province has been inundated with nearly 20,000 applications. While much of the political and media focus has been on orphan wells — those left behind without an owner — they are just the “tip of the iceberg,” Nikki Way, senior analyst at the Pembina Institute, told The Narwhal. “The bulk of the work that needs to be done is still in the hands of private industry.”
That work involves the sealing off and cleaning up of tens of thousands of inactive wells across the province, still owned by private companies that haven’t had the means — or the incentive — to clean them up. Some of those wells have been languishing on the landscape for decades.
With federal funds flowing to private companies to clean up the wells, questions are now being raised about whether that funding provides a transfer of taxpayer money to the oil and gas industry — and what strings might be attached. “It was a good compromise right now. These are very unusual times,” Barry Robinson, a Calgary-based lawyer with Ecojustice said, noting the funding means more jobs and a reduction of environmental risk.
But, he added, the problem of companies not cleaning up wells is “a bigger problem to fix.” Too often, he noted, companies let wells sit for years or decades instead of paying to clean them up. For Lucija Muehlenbachs, associate professor of economics at the University of Calgary, the program has good goals — it reduces environmental risk and creates jobs in the short term — but confuses the message to companies. As she put it, it sends a “bad signal.” “Are companies thinking, ‘OK, why should I clean [a well] up because eventually the government is going to pick up the bill?’” she asked.
EDIT
https://thenarwhal.ca/how-federal-funding-can-address-the-root-causes-of-albertas-inactive-well-problem/
= new reply since forum marked as read
