Alberta’s premier is rejecting opposition claims that his $100 million pilot project plan to clean up old oil wells was influenced by his United Conservative Party leadership campaign, arguing that the work needs to be done to get it done. Federal funds missed out on many of the province’s worst sites.
Speaking on her province-wide radio call-in show on Saturday, Danielle Smith said the worst wells have been inactive for decades and reiterated her argument that the government shares some of the blame for the fact that regulatory companies are shirking their responsibilities. leave without completing.
Smith said many of the companies that abandoned those wells without cleaning them are no longer there.
“Because we are targeting it so closely at the worst wells, we are looking at sites, for example, that have been inactive for 20 years that were drilled before 1990, so these are among the worst sites. Smith told an audience on Saturday after being asked about the NDP’s claims that the event was linked to his leadership’s fundraising.
“Now we have someone holding the bag who may not be responsible for the initial liability. We have regulators who have given permission for those transfers. We have had regulators in the past who didn’t require clearing.
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“I think we have to take some responsibility as a government for the fact that we didn’t manage this the way we historically should have.”
NDP energy critic Kathleen Ganley said on Friday it is a “huge concern” that before Smith re-entered politics, she lobbied for an oil well cleanup bailout, which she promised the government when she became premier. Gave priority
Smith has not disclosed the sources of the $1.3 million he raised for his leadership campaign last year, and his office has not answered questions about how his campaign’s fundraising has affected his governance priorities.
The Liability Management Incentive Program proposes to provide $100 million in royalty breaks to companies that meet their legal obligations to restore old oil and gas wells. A royalty is the price Alberta charges a company to develop a resource.
Scotiabank analysts said in a report that the proposal “goes against a core capitalist principle that private companies should take full responsibility for the liabilities they voluntarily assume.”
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Drew Barnes, an independent member of the legislature and former member of the UCP caucus, has called the plan “corporate welfare”.
Smith praised the federal government’s site rehabilitation program on Saturday, which provided $1 billion for the recovery of good sites, but said the program was nearing completion and had missed the worst sites.
She said flaring pits — which she described as pools of water where waste materials were dumped — are the biggest problem and have been sitting for 40 to 60 years in some cases. She said they are not being cleaned up because “it’s such a huge environmental liability expense that companies are worried they won’t be able to get the signoff on.”
Landlords have been left with uncontrolled sites, she said.
“I advocated for this program when I first heard about it because I feel very passionately about landlords’ rights. I feel so passionately that this has been a long term problem. Nobody’s got a way to address it,” Smith told the audience.
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