CBC is reporting that "Another Alberta oil and gas company has closed its doors, leaving more than $80 million in estimated costs to cleanup its remaining wells, pipelines and facilities. Calgary-based Houston Oil & Gas told the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) last month that it was ceasing operations and no longer has any employees, according to court documents. Houston entered receivership last week. The company is focused primarily in southeast Alberta and predominantly produces natural gas, according to its web site."
This is a reoccurring problem. Oil companies abandon a well and expect the tax payer to pay for clean up. Old, unproductive oil and gas wells could cost up to $70B to clean up
Alberta Inactive & Orphan Wells
With a name like that, it may have been a foreign owned company to begin with.
ReplyDeleteWith climate alarmism being the govt and media's pet project to help usher in social control it's going to get worse.
Without refineries in canada it's just going to get worse.
Local refineries would help.
DeleteIf Jason Kenny is so distressed about the unemployed former oil patch workers, he could create a Crown Corporation to remediate all those derelict wells. Clean up the wells and provide jobs. he could most likely get the feds to contribute a few hundred million.
ReplyDeleteThese companies don't care about anything but their bottom line and share holders. this perhaps could be a lesson to politicians who have resource extraction going on in their provinces. Get the money from these corporations up front and forget about the tax breaks. As it now stands, these companies got tax breAks and left a mess behind.
Making tax payers pay for the clean up is not fiscally responsible.
DeleteThey're (govt) are only looking at the short term and the business models they've learned in school.
DeleteThey are not held responsible for their decisions.
They think short term as their office only requires two terms for a pension. I'd love a job where I only have to work 8 years, get months off, free travel, expenses paid, another residence, short work day where I get a throne-like chair to sit in, have aides and pages to run errands for me, etc.
Most honest people would do all that for free. Let alone get paid tremendous sums of money.