For years, Albertans have been sharing stories of how leaking and aging wells are damaging their health and ruining their land. The "Mature Asset Strategy" would accelerate the trend of oil and gas companies dining on profits, then dashing out on their cleanup costs, lease payments, and municipal taxes – leaving devastation in their wake.
Wells, creeks, and groundwater poisoned by leaking infrastructure. Damages drinking water and livestock. Crop yields and grazing land harmed for decades.
Can't farm contaminated land. Can't sell devalued property. Cleanup costs you can't afford. Landowners face costly legal fights.
Headaches, breathing issues, and illnesses from exposure to toxins like hydrogen sulfide and benzene.
Over $250 million in unpaid municipal taxes. Companies promise cleanup, then disappear. Regulators say they'll help, then don't.
Aging wells create tension between landowners, municipalities, and remaining oil companies.
Young farmers don't want to inherit land with massive environmental liabilities.
RMA President & Brazeau County Councillor
"Some municipalities are just trying to keep the lights on right now and employ the handful of people that they have left. I've got a municipality up in the north that's owed 34% of their revenue from one company's unpaid taxes."
Brazeau County Landowners
"Now we're not getting any income from the wells. And we also can't utilize the space in the area that they were because they're still under lease. The big companies take the cream off the top, then as soon as there's a little bit less production, then they sell it to a smaller company that doesn't have the resources to be able to reclaim."
Twin Butte Landowner
"We actually toured them around the sites. They guaranteed us that something would happen in the next six months. We never heard back from them."
Alberta Landowner
"Farmers and landowners across Alberta like me trusted the oil and gas companies to clean up these wells on our lands once they've stopped producing, but many energy companies have betrayed Albertans and dumped their cleanup duties onto everyone else."
Director, Action Surface Rights Association
"I'll be frank, from a landowner perspective: we want the wells cleaned up. And the original social contract was society can take our land, expropriate it, extract resources, with a guarantee you're going to clean up the mess."
2020 Economic Development Manager, Calmar Alberta
"Companies came, they drilled, they made millions of dollars and then they left. If I'm unable to help this community grow by creating jobs and development, then our community essentially could die."
Landowner with unreclaimed well next to family home (2019)
"The flare is supposed to be lit at all times but it was not and it was expending gas. [My husband] would get up at night and it wouldn't be lit … so he'd go and light the flare. The Dorins blame their health complications on gas leaks from the well."
