More than 4,000 wells and hundreds of other pieces of infrastructure were recently transferred to the Orphan Well Association following the closure of Long Run Exploration, leaving land owners and municipalities without rent and taxes.
This is the largest transfer to the OWA in Alberta’s history, doubling the association’s inventory overnight. Despite a 100 per cent increase in orphan wells, the levy paid by industry is rising by only seven per cent this year, said the Pembina Institute.
“This is clearly inadequate for the scale of the problem, and it leaves Albertans to bear the harms associated with unremediated wells near their homes and businesses,” said Janetta McKenzie, director of the oil and gas program for the Pembina Institute.
“Industry funding is what drives progress on this long-standing problem, and the Orphan Well Association is persistently underfunded,” she told a meeting in Calgary.
Even before their wells are formally orphaned, some energy companies fail to pay rent to landowners, forcing Alberta taxpayers to pick up the bill. In 2024, Alberta taxpayers paid $30 million to landowners to cover delinquent lease payments.
“Leaving these aging and inactive wells for years and even decades on end with remediation causes real financial harm to all Albertans, and physical harm to landowners,” said Natalie Odd, executive director of the Alberta Environmental Network.
“At best, they’re stuck with obstacles to agriculture, driving up their costs. But in many cases they face toxic contamination of their air, water, and soil from leaking wells.”
Teresa Patry, a livestock producer and farmer in the Vermilion area, said "I am being forced off my land and straight out of my home because if you can't breathe the air what good is the land? It has been very difficult for me to give up my privacy as I have been forced to go public with this problem to hopefully save not only my family but my livelihood as well. When the regulator won't take a landowner's concerns seriously it steals a great deal from them."
Some energy companies also fail to pay their municipal taxes.
According to the Rural Municipalities Association, oil and gas companies owe more than $250 million in property taxes, money the province admits will never be recovered.
"We must not leave the burden of oil and gas well cleanup to our children and future generations," said Claire Kraatz, Clean Air Campaign organizer with For Our Kids.
“Polluters must pay, and our regulator needs to ensure that laws are enforced. We teach our kids to clean up their messes. Why aren't oil and gas polluters cleaning up theirs?”
The provincial government’s newest plan is to transfer ownership of low- and non-producing wells to special-purpose entities created by the government with the hope of using some remaining production to finance the cleanup.
“This mess was created by industry, and industry must pay to clean it up,” said Phillip Meintzer, co-founder of the Coalition for Responsible Energy (C4RE).
“If paying for cleanup with the last few barrels of production actually works, then industry can take on the risk and do it themselves.
“Transferring these wells into public ownership with a totally unproven concept means Alberta taxpayers will be left with the bill – yet again – if it doesn’t work,” he said.
