CBC News: Groups push back on Alberta's strategy to deal with inactive oil and gas wells

Originally published by CBC News Edmonton Republished in accordance with CBC’s terms of use

A pumpjack draws out oil and gas from a well head with a Canola field in the background near Cremona, Alta., Tuesday, July 15, 2025. (Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press)

A consortium of advocate groups is renewing calls to scrap the Alberta government’s proposed plans for dealing with aging oil and gas infrastructure, but the province is moving ahead.

The Coalition for Responsible Energy (C4RE), which is composed of more than 15 land rights, surface rights, environmental, health, science, Indigenous and civil advocate groups, has been campaigning across Alberta over the past several months.

The current core issue for C4RE is the government of Alberta’s mature asset strategy, a plan to deal with the inventory of aging oil and gas infrastructure and the issues surrounding it.

“We would like to see the mature asset strategy scrapped,” campaign organizer Phillip Meintzer said.

“I just think you need to go back to the drawing board with meaningful and open public consultation.”

The strategy was a focal point in a recent mandate letter from Premier Danielle Smith to Energy Minister Brian Jean and is informed by a report of 21 recommendations published by the province in April.

The energy and minerals ministry told CBC in an emailed response to questions that it is moving forward with 20 of the 21 recommendations, but didn’t say which one is not being adopted.

After the draft version of the report was leaked, the final version had some reworded sections, including the suggestion that the province should manage a new insurance fund as opposed to backstopping liabilities with taxpayer dollars.

C4RE says it believes the development of the report was closed off to the public, one-sided towards industry and fails to hold the oil and gas sector accountable to its closure responsibilities.

The Scale of the Problem

The report describes a plan to tackle the cleanup, decommissioning and possible repurposing of 275,000 oil and gas-related assets deemed mature. This includes orphan wells, but also other inactive and marginally productive facilities nearing or at the end of expected life cycles.

The report was developed internally and included a consultation process that involved 97 entities and 200 people. It initially drew attention in March when a draft version was leaked and reported on.

The oil and gas assets referenced in the report are understood to be potentially hazardous to human health and pose environmental risks as well, according to reports from Alberta’s auditor general. Reports from the Alberta Energy Regulator estimate the total liability of these oil and gas assets to be around $38 billion.

“It’s just going to be used as a way to offload company cleanup obligations onto the public.” — Phillip Meintzer, campaign organizer with the Coalition for Responsible Energy

Meintzer said he’s especially concerned that the mature asset strategy’s report, in his view, may violate the polluter pays principle, a long-held Canadian legal rule that holds polluters responsible for managing their pollution.

Part of the report calls for legislation to allow for the creation of special-purpose companies that could take on the responsibility for the closure of some oil and gas wells. If these companies fail, Meintzer worries that taxpayers could be on the hook.

“It’s just going to be used as a way to offload company cleanup obligations onto the public,” he said.

In an email to CBC News, Alberta’s energy ministry said it continues to support the polluter pays principle and that taxpayer dollars will not be used to clean up private company wells.

CBC News followed up with another email with questions for the ministry regarding what kind of companies could be tasked with dealing with aging energy infrastructure. As of publication, the ministry had yet to reply.

Industry Response and Wellbore Blues

Some within the industry say the cleanup issues are seeing progress. Changes made in recent years have been ramping up the closure of wells, said Richard Wong, vice-president regulatory and operations with the Canadian Association Petroleum Producers.

Wong said in an emailed response to questions from CBC, that inactive wells peaked in 2020 and have steadily declined, and well licensees were exceeding closure spending requirements.

Still, tense relationships and trust issues between the province, industry, landowners and municipalities over the management of aging oil and gas infrastructure are also mentioned in the mature asset strategy’s recommendations report.

A report published by the Rural Municipalities of Alberta earlier this year, claims that its members are owed close to $254 million in unpaid taxes from oil and gas companies.

“I won’t blame the current government for where we’re at,” said Kara Westerlund, the president of RMA.

She said the issue is complex, and results from decades of neglect. Moving forward, she hopes that the province will work to hold polluters accountable and ensure that municipalities and landowners are paid properly.

While RMA was a part of the consultation process, Westerlund said she shares some of C4RE’s concerns about the process being closed off. She also said she believes the report’s findings aren’t credible and aren’t supported by data.

Legal Expert Perspectives

“It tries to sort of rewrite the origins of the problem” — Martin Olszynski, University of Calgary law professor

Martin Olszynski, a law professor at the University of Calgary, has been researching the issue for the past eight years. Independently of C4RE, he co-wrote a recent paper about the mature asset strategy.

“It tries to sort of rewrite the origins of the problem,” he said in an interview with CBC.

“We know that it was essentially a lax regulatory regime over time that has allowed this to happen.”

At the turn of the century, there was a robust liability management regime in Alberta, Olszynski said, arguing that industry lobbyists pushed hard to deconstruct accountability mechanisms.

Since then, many junk assets were traded off to companies with questionable feasibility, some fell into bankruptcy and others limped along without the ability to meet payments and closure responsibilities, Olszynski said.

The mature asset strategy report describes solutions to address the financial challenges some oil and gas companies face amid a seachange in natural gas prices and the shift from conventional oil extraction to a focus on the oilsands.

But Olszynski said he believes this could be rewarding neglect. He said many tools to hold the industry accountable and to fund closures still exist, and the government needs to ensure those mechanisms are properly funded and enforced.

Future Concerns

As the province moves to implement most of the mature asset strategy’s recommendations, it’s also looking to ramp up its energy economy, with Premier Smith saying she wants to double oil production.

If that happens without addressing closures properly, Olszynski said he believes the problems around mature assets could get worse.

“If we double production, we will double the liabilities.”

Read the original article: Groups push back on Alberta’s strategy to deal with inactive oil and gas wells as plan moves forward

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