Alberta wants to know how it got so screwed by abandoned oil and gas wells. 3,406 as of today and that may just be the tip of Alberta's hydrocarbon iceberg.
As Alberta struggles to clean up thousands of oil and gas wells left behind by bankrupt companies, the province's auditor general is set to investigate how the problem became so big and why the industry regulator's efforts to collect security deposits came up so short, CBC News has learned.
Often referred to as orphan wells, there are currently 3,406 such wells scattered around the province, usually on the properties of rural landowners, where they lie untended.
There are another 94,000 inactive wells in the province, with the worry that many of these may become orphaned as their owners struggle — and taxpayers could be left with the bill.
The auditor general's office will look at whether the province is doing enough to prevent wells from becoming orphaned in the first place, and whether it is prepared for more to be added to the list due to ongoing pressure on Alberta's energy economy.Alberta is the most fiscally reckless province in Canada. A land of "everday low taxes" and even lower fossil fuel royalties. A province that consigns its people to a perpetual boom and bust economy where the government is never short of whipping boys to blame for its own breathtaking incompetence.
These wells are great, at the outset, when they're big producers but eventually they fizzle. That's when their owners, knowing the provincial governments will turn a blind eye, quietly transfer the wells and all their environmental liabilities into shell companies, Potemkin businesses that have no assets and soon go bankrupt - stiffing the taxpayers for the clean up.
Just wait until those Athabasca tailing ponds get dumped in the taxpayers' laps. That's when they'll have to turn to a nationwide bailout. Do start putting aside your loonies now.
4 comments:
.. simply excellent post, incredibly timely and contemporary... and reflects a dismal tale of corruption, failure & political deceit. The reality is epicenter in the matrix of captured political parties and governments, both provincial and federal. Does self regulation of fossil fuel resource extraction 'work' ? Does it have any salvageable aspects ? No. Its revealed as a recipe for utter disaster. This scandal is about remediation fantasy and fiction and political deceit.. all meant to mislead voters and taxpayers, while methane and CO2 flow from well over 100 thousand useless or orphaned wells.. We are not even rolling in the pretend self regulation re 'world class pollution and emissions monitoring. For how long will the current liar in chief of Alberta and the current Prime Minister try to maintain the massives, simply astonishing ongoing grift that is also sucking up staggering subsidies.. again, these are subsidies paid for by the Canadian taxpayers.
Mr. Trudeau's moment of truth looms near, Sal. It won't be long before he'll have to decide on the Teck bitumen mine proposal. If he greenlights that, his climate credibility is flushed straight down the crapper. If he says no, Kenney will scapegoat him until he bleeds. Remember, this is the same guy with all the lofty words such as "social licence" that came to nothing.
Anyone who's ever worked in a petrochemical facility knows that the idea of allowing any aspect of operations in that industry to be self-regulated must have been conceived by the dumbest shovel in the shed. They are masters of the cover-ass coverup. The top guys don't get trashed when the shit hits; they get praised and promoted for following the playbook when they squeak out of it, while some powerless slugs get run off the claim. There must be a school where they turn them out.
I believe there is such a school as you mention, John. Only you and I and the rest of the plebs aren't getting in. One name comes to mind - Upper Canada College.
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