Danielle Smith should abandon her terrible orphan oil well plan for Alberta
Successive provincial governments, mostly conservative, couldn’t find the resolve to get these deserted operations cleaned up. In many cases, they were orphaned by companies that went bankrupt, leaving a mess behind on the property of some poor farmer who was given no choice when the government approved the site for exploration and development.
For starters, under the plan oil companies that clean up these abandoned wells can take advantage of up to $100-million in “royalty credits” on future production. In other words, monies normally turned over to the government in the form of royalties would go into the pockets of these oil companies instead.
the Orphan Wells Association, an organization to which the oil and gas industry pays into. But the OWA has clearly not met its commitments and no one, including the Alberta Energy Regulator, whose job is to govern the activities of this sector, has held it to account.approximately 83,000 inactive wells in Alberta, about 20,000 of which were drilled before 1980 and have been inactive for more than 20 years. Those are the ones her proposed project is apparently designed to target.
Not a single one. Who’s to say Ms. Smith’s plan won’t also turn into a giant multimillion-dollar boondoggle?
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