Alberta In A Nutshell: NDP - Timeline For Reclaiming Old Wells; UCP - Even Faster Oil/Gas Permits

EDIT

The NDP’s platform, released on Sunday, promises to implement timelines for reclamation of oil and gas sites, saying it “will implement clear timelines for when companies need to clean up their abandoned oil and gas wells and require them to justify delays in reclaiming sites.”

States like Texas, North Dakota, Alabama and Nevada have timelines in place to ensure oil and gas companies clean up their sites in a set amount of time. According to a report by Lucija Muehlenbachs, an associate professor of economics at the University of Calgary, “in the U.S., the time limit on suspension ranges from six to 300 months.”

The UCP platform, on the other hand, makes no mention of timelines, other than to note that it will speed up the approval of new well sites. On Tuesday, Kenney stood in front of a pumpjack and a herd of cattle in Turner Valley and told reporters there would be a “rapid acceleration of approvals,” noting the UCP would “establish legislated benchmarks for approval times” on new wells, but did not specify if timelines would be imposed on cleanup of the hundreds of thousands of old ones.

The party’s platform does note that a UCP government would “increase the rate at which wells that will not be used again are officially ‘abandoned,’ ” though it remains unclear what this might entail. Alberta’s current system relies on a cost-benefit analysis for the company. The company is required to pay rent to landowners when a site sits unreclaimed on their land. Once the company obtains a reclamation certificate, that obligation is over.

EDIT

https://thenarwhal.ca/notley-vs-kenney-on-how-to-deal-with-albertas-167000-inactive-and-abandoned-oil-and-gas-wells/