ESAA Photo Contest Calendar IS BACK for 2025
Sponsor a Page / Buy and Ad
Sponsor a page in the upcoming 2025 ESAA Calendar. The 2025 calendar will feature 13 photos from the ESAA Photo Contest. By sponsoring a page you will get an ad for one of the months of the calendar. (13 available) Calendars will be distributed at RemTech to attendees.
Sponsor now
B.C. cuts harmful methane emissions from oil and gas sector
AER: Reminder of Increased Risk During Migratory Bird Season
It is now migratory bird season in the province, and we remind licensees of their responsibility to follow bird protection plans to protect migratory bird populations. During the bird migration period, the weather can cause birds to land unexpectedly and in places where they would not normally seek to rest. Licensees must adhere to their plans and ensure that all liquid impoundments within their facilities that could potentially have an adverse impact on migratory bird populations are covered.
Remember, the timing for migratory bird season can change annually depending on the weather, which may require licensees to extend their bird-deterrent programs past the previous or typical dates. We also remind licensees that certain attractants, such as vegetation around industrial ponds and ditches, can draw in wildlife, including waterfowl, and should be managed to mitigate impacts.
If you have any questions, contact our Customer Contact Centre by phone at 1-855-297-8311 or by email at inquiries@aer.ca.
AER: Updated Requirements for Unpaid Municipal Property Taxes
Effective September 15, 2024, and in accordance with Ministerial Order 096/2024, the AER will continue to require evidence that licensees have resolved unpaid property taxes exceeding a threshold amount before approving a new well licence application under Directive 056: Energy Development Applications and Schedules, Directive 089: Geothermal Resource Development, and Directive 090: Brine-Hosted Mineral Development or a well licence transfer application under Directive 088: Licensee Life-Cycle Management.
The threshold for municipal tax arrears remains at $20 000. This amount was determined by reviewing current licensee information related to unpaid municipal taxes and in consultation with the Ministry of Energy and Minerals and the Ministry of Municipal Affairs. The list of licensees that exceed this threshold is provided by Municipal Affairs.
Listed licensees must continue to provide satisfactory evidence to the AER that arrears exceeding the threshold have been paid or that a payment arrangement has been made with the municipality or municipalities to which the arrears are owed. The AER will accept evidence in the form of either a letter signed by the chief administrative officer of the municipality on municipality letterhead or a valid tax certificate. It is the licensee’s responsibility to gather and submit evidence when requested by the AER as part of the application process. For well licence transfer applications where the transferor is listed, the applicant must provide evidence that payment of municipal taxes exceeding the threshold is a condition of the purchase and sale agreement with the transferee. Evidence must be in the form of a letter signed by a director or an officer of the company and contain a verbatim citation of the condition within the purchase and sale agreement. This letter should be provided at the time of application and may be subject to an AER audit.
If required evidence is not provided by the licensee, the AER will return the application as incomplete, per section 3(4)(b) of the Alberta Energy Regulator Rules of Practice and Ministerial Order 096/2024.
This new order differs from the previous order in that the direction does not apply to an application for approval of the transfer of a well licence if the transferee has no municipal tax arrears in excess of the threshold and any of the following apply:
- a) “The well licence pertains to a well which is designated by the AER to be an orphan well under section 70(2) of the Oil and Gas Conservation Act, R.S.A 2000, c. O-6, as amended (OGCA),
- b) “The transferor is a working interest participant which is deemed by the AER to be a defaulting working interest participant under section 70(2) of the OGCA, or
- c) “The well licence, or the well to which it pertains, is the property of a debtor subject to a proceeding in which a receiver, receiver-manager, trustee, liquidator, or monitor has been appointed, including, without limiting the foregoing, a proceeding in which the Court of King’s Bench of Alberta has appointed a receiver, receiver-manager, trustee, or liquidator on an application by the AER under section 106.1 of the OGCA.”
For more information about AER actions and procedures in response to unpaid municipal property taxes, please visit our website, aer.ca > Regulating Development > Project Application > Application Processes. If you have any questions, contact our Customer Contact Centre by phone at 1-855-297-8311 or by email at inquiries@aer.ca.
‘A lost opportunity’: Alberta gives back $137M to Ottawa in unspent funds to clean up inactive wells
(Source: CBC News) The Alberta government has officially handed back more than $137 million to the federal government after running out of time to spend the cash to clean up old oil and natural gas wells.
Questions remain about why the provincial government was unable to use the much-needed funding, considering there are tens of thousands of inactive wells.
Many companies are also disappointed that the full amount wasn’t spent because of the loss of reclamation work it would have created.
The cash was part of the federal government’s $1.7-billion funding pledge in 2020 aimed at reducing the environmental risk of aging oil and gas infrastructure, while also providing work for the oilfield service sector after the pandemic began and oil prices crashed.
The money was divided between B.C. ($120 million), Alberta ($1 billion) and Saskatchewan ($400 million). Alberta’s Orphan Well Association received a $200-million loan to support the cleanup of wells left over when companies go bankrupt.
Saskatchewan dispersed all of its share, while B.C. had to return a small amount of unspent money, the federal government confirmed.
Last year, Alberta began lobbying the federal government to keep the leftover funds to continue remediation work in the oilpatch, specifically to clean up wells on Indigenous land, even though the deadline for the funding had passed.
“Though much effort was spent in trying to convince the federal government to see the value in this continuation, they demanded the return of the unexpended funds,” said Alberta Energy Minister Brian Jean, in an emailed statement.
The money was returned last month, Jean said. It will be deposited with the government’s general revenue, according to Katherine Cuplinskas, press secretary for federal Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland.
“Why was that money not spent?” asked Duane Bratt, a political science professor at Mount Royal University in Calgary. “The sector agrees it’s important, the provincial government thinks it’s important, the federal government has said it’s important, resources were put in play and they weren’t used or they weren’t fully used.”
Bratt also pointed to the political optics of the situation, considering Premier Danielle Smith and her cabinet “complain all the time about federal spending powers in Alberta and that there’s inequitable transfer payments between Ottawa and Alberta compared to other provinces.”
Initially, the Alberta government struggled to launch its Site Rehabilitation Program (SRP) as government staff were overwhelmed by a flood of applications. Eventually, tens of thousands of projects were approved to use up all of the federal funding.
Still, after a few years, a portion of the money remained unspent as some of the approved cleanup work was not completed.
Some industry leaders point to poor weather and labour shortages to help explain the unfinished work.
“You can’t expect us to spend all of this in minus-35 degree weather when the ground is frozen,” said Gurpreet Lail, president and CEO of Enserva, an association representing oilfield service companies.
“If we had a little bit more time, we would have spent this money,” she said.
A portion of the SRP focused on cleaning up wells and other old oil and gas infrastructure on Indigenous land, which took time to provide training to local communities.
The unused funding is “1,000 per cent a lost opportunity,” but the overall program was critical in helping the industry through an “extremely difficult” time for the sector, said Lail.
She wishes the leftover money could have stayed in the province to continue cleanup efforts, specifically on Indigenous land.
“This is the first time we’ve been able to train Indigenous people to work on their own land in reclamation and dealing with abandoned wells alongside all our member companies. And why wouldn’t you want to continue that work?” she said.
The Alberta government had agreed to a federal government deadline for the funds to be committed to specific cleanup efforts by March 31, 2022, which was extended to May 15, 2022. The actual cleanup work had to be completed and invoiced by Feb. 14, 2023.
“I’m sure they are disappointed,” said Joe Chowaniec, executive director of the Environmental Services Association of Alberta, about how his members companies are feeling about the unspent money.
“It could have been used to put people to work,” he said.
While industry is still thankful for the SRP, there are critics who feel it was a lost opportunity to address the province’s inactive well problem.
Not only was the program slow to launch, but some of the money went to wealthy oil and gas companies which didn’t need a helping hand, says Drew Yewchuk, a former staff lawyer with the University of Calgary’s Public Interest Law Clinic.
Alberta energy minister’s oil well cleanup possibilities criticized
(Source: Canadian Press)
Observers are criticizing Alberta Energy Minister Brian Jean’s suggestions on how the province might clean up its thousands of abandoned oil wells, saying they favour industry and lack input from the public.
“Albertans are owed a better explanation than they have received so far about why this is necessary,” said Martin Olszynski, a professor of resource law at the University of Calgary.
Jean’s department is opening consultations on how to deal with Alberta’s nearly half-million oil and gas wells, two-thirds of which are not producing. Estimates of the potential cost vary wildly into the hundreds of billions of dollars.
In an interview, Jean suggested that although it’s not his preferred solution, some form of public assistance may be needed to clean up the mess despite industry’s legal obligations. He also suggested municipalities may have to take a haircut on their tax levies and that industry’s regulatory burden may need to be lightened.
But Olszynski said many energy companies are thriving. Any kind of a publicly financed bailout would raise serious questions, Olszynski said.
“There is no rational explanation for this support when you realize this industry is not a monolith. In the absence of a better explanation, Albertans are properly left to wonder what’s going on.”
Katie Morrison of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society said using public resources on the problem doesn’t address how it came to be in the first place.
“We can look at the short of what needs to be done immediately, (but) we also need to be looking at how do we prevent this. I don’t see anything in what (Jean’s) been talking about so far that’s going to prevent the situation from happening over and over.”
“This narrative that (reducing) municipal taxes is what’s going to save the industry is a completely ridiculous notion,” he said.
He said business groups such as the Alberta Enterprise Group — once headed by now-premier Danielle Smith — have been lobbying for municipal tax reductions for years.
“The government’s going to do this on the backs of rural Albertans,” McLauchlin said. “Rural MLAs need to speak up.”
Opposition New Democrat energy critic Nagwan Al-Guneid said reducing environmental liabilities for energy companies with public resources amounts to breaking the law.
“It is unacceptable to use public money to clean up the legal obligations of companies to clean up the environmental damage they cause,” she said.
Olszynski also questioned Jean’s statement that the Alberta Energy Regulator’s footprint is too large. He pointed out the province’s auditor general found in a January report that the regulator underestimated cleanup liabilities and didn’t have a good handle on pipeline reclamation or the state of Alberta’s 59,000 pieces of energy infrastructure.
“It’s hard to square the auditor general’s concerns with the idea of a lighter regulatory burden.”
If anything, the regulator’s reach should be stronger, said Al-Guneid.
“I think we have great regulations,” she said. “They’re not being enforced.”
Both Olszynski and Morrison criticized the lack of public input in Jean’s consultations.
“It’s often that (this government) looks at the industry perspective and the economic perspective but not at the whole picture,” Morrison said.
Olszynski said leaving the public out of such discussions is how Alberta wound up with such a large liability in the first place.
“Surely, by now, you would think maybe we should bring the public in.”
Richard Wong of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers said government moves have helped operators reduce the inventory of inactive wells by 18,000 from 2018 to 2023. The overall percentage of inactive wells has fallen from 21 to 17 over the last four years.
“While there is more to be done to further accelerate the process for well closures, (the association) is looking forward to working with other stakeholders on potential regulatory, policy and fiscal measures that may be needed to address the challenges in regions of Alberta with mature oil and gas-producing assets through the province’s mature asset strategy consultations,” Wong wrote in an email.
Upcoming Events
Program Announced for CE3C 2025!
Hi Joe, We are thrilled to announce the detailed program for CE3C 2025! Join us on January 29-30, 2025, in Vancouver, B.C., for two days full of invaluable insights and strategic discussions designed to keep you ahead in the environmental and engineering sectors.
For more details or to register visit: https://ce3c.ca/program/
ESAA & the Saskatchewan Institute of Agrologists (SIA)
AG & Enviro Learning & Networking Event
September 26th, 2024
Servus Sports Center
5202 12 St (OTS Room upstairs), Lloyminster, AB
2:00 pm to 7:00 pm
ESAA is pleased to partner with SIA to offer the following Ag & Enviro Learning & Networking Event on September 26th, 2024. The talks will take place from 2:00 pm to 5:00 pm followed by a Networking event from 5:00 pm to 7:00 pm. It will feature 5 speakers and will be held at Servus Sports Centre in Lloydminster.
This event will feature a series of technical learning talks for the environmental professionals. Our goal is to bring the North American environmental community together to enhance our collective understanding of cutting edge soil characterization, agrology and remediation technologies.
Presentations will include;
PAH Presentation
Paul Fuellbrandt, Statvis Analytics Inc.
Saskatchewan Organic (Organic farming)
Michelle Beckett, Ambipar
TBA
TBA, Core Environmental
TBA
Corey Morgan, University of Saskatchewan (Tentative)
- ESAA / SIA Members: $20 + GST
- ESAA / SIA Non-Members: $30 + GST
- Sponsorship: $395 – $595 (3 available)
Register or Sponsor Now
ESAA Job Board
Check out the new improved ESAA Job Board. Members can post ads for free.
Current Listings:
- Senior Environmental Planner –Stantec
- Site Investigation & Remediation (SIR) Team Lead –Stantec Consulting Services Inc.
- Environmental Risk Assessment & Technical Reporting – Arletta Environmental Consulting Corp
- Contaminated Sites Project Manager – Alberta & Saskatchewan – Triton Environmental Consultants Ltd. (“Triton”)
- Contaminant Hydrogeologist – Matrix Solutions Inc.
- Environmental Specialist – Bowron Environmental Group Ltd
- Sustainability Engineer – City of Lethbridge
- Environmental Monitoring Specialist Job Number: 50623 – City of Edmonton