cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/42980
The orphan wells trace back to a tangled web of foreign investors, a company based in the British Virgin Islands and a last-ditch effort to sell to a Chinese company for $22M
From The Narwhal via This RSS Feed.
Uhm, that should read “ANOTHER oil and gas company just left behind…”
As usual the UCP is all talk and fluff. They’ve been talking about improving this for a long time because it keeps happening and making the news, but they know all they need to do is say they’re working on it and people will forget.
We need to tax these companies more and we need to make them pay for cleanup up front, as other have said. Anything less is doing nothing.
Each and every well should not be started until a trust is set up with the cost of cleanup deposited in it. Once the company quits the well from either it drying up or the company going under, the trust is given to the government including the interest to pay for cleanup.
Not one shovel should hit soil until the cleanup is already prepaid.
There is a cleanup fund that o&g companies are supposed to be paying in to, but miss maple maga has never enforced it, and the fund is bone dry.
If provincial idiot won’t do it then it is on the federal government to introduce and enforce rules to benefit the citizens of the stupid areas.
Well, it used to be that the resources and mining were federally owned, thanks to Pierre Trudeau, but Mulroney had that repealed. We’d have all been way better off if we still got to keep the profits of our resource extraction.
Dude. Every company running a well is 99-100% foreign-owned, and STILL the AB gov isn’t hardly taxing them for the mess and the loss of resources. Getting them to put up a bond for cleanup I worry is a bridge too far.
There’s so much that has to be fixed with that. Let’s see if they ever get a non-con gov.
It is too late to get money from these companies if they fold, especially since they are practically created to fold as soon as the aren’t getting the expected return on investment.
Prepaying is the only way to make sure they are responsible. If it leads to them not starting as many wells then they are only proving that they weren’t planning on cleaning up afterwards to begin with.
Just so long as they aren’t pre-paying with IOU’s. There is lots of cases with pension funds having a bunch of company bonds or other debt instruments that become worthless when the company folds (Nortel comes to mind).
Canadian dollars only. In a trust or financial device that pays out to the government not the company. Non refundable but transferrable if you don’t end up drilling that well then it can move to another proposed well.
In case they think of asking for the money back if they clean up themselves, it still needs a third party inspection after a 5 year period to insure the clean up wasn’t half assed before payout of initial deposit. All interest goes to environmental protection agencies.
They do this literally every time and then government just goes and says, no.problem sir, thank you sir. Canada can be a real joke sometimes. Are you aware those are the resources that belong to Canadians, and you sell them for pennies on the dollar and clean up for them too, at our expense I might add.
You’re right but this is an Albertan problem not a Canadian problem.
Canada could have nationalized their oil like Norway did. Instead they did… this bullshit.
You conveniently forget that resource extraction is a provincial jurisdiction.
And how does that counter anything in my statement?
dump all the contaminated soil on the CEO’s front lawns… I’d pay more in taxes if the government had some balls and actually stood up to these pricks
They would need to find the CEO first. It sounds like this well belonged to a series of shell companies.
then pick one at random.
They need to pay upfront for the cleanup.
Exactly. I’ve got to leave a deposit with my landlord in case I leave a mess when i move out, same should go for these oil companies.
Actually, that’s illegal. They can ask for the first month rent early but not a deposit.
Must be nice to live where you do; around here, damage deposits are kept in trust, and returned when you move out, with interest, minus any amount needed to pay for damage repairs.
Not that we actually keep up with that clean-up deal no matter who is footing the bill.
track down all the executives and directors of the companies that formerly owned them, and put them to work. don’t let them make this someone else’s problem.
the big loser is the investors.
Don’t gamble with money you can’t afford to lose.
The big loser is the taxpayers.
