Alberta’s largest energy companies are underestimating how much it will cost to clean up thousands of oil and gas wells drilled over past decades, a consortium warns — estimating that the bill for just one energy industry giant alone would be $11.9 billion.
The Alberta Liabilities Disclosure Project — a coalition of landowners, scientists, environmentalists and others — has released a list of companies and its estimate of how much it would cost each to remediate each pf the properties if it had to be done today.
The coalition says those costs are much higher than the companies estimate because they are assuming they will have decades of cleanup time.
The coalition says Calgary-based Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. is facing the largest bill at $11.9 billion to clean up 73,000 oil, gas and bitumen wells in Alberta.
The following companies would have to pay the most to clean up their wells, according to the coalition’s list:
- Canadian Natural Resources Ltd.: $11.9 billion
- Husky Energy Inc. $2.17 billion
- IPC Alberta Ltd.: $2 billion.
- Imperial Oil Ltd.: $1.7 billion.
- Torxen Energy Ltd.: $1.7 billion.
- Obsidian Energy Ltd.” $1.5 billion.
- Cenovus Energy Ltd.: $1.4 billion.
- Canlin Energy Corp.: $1.4 billion.
- Paramount Resources Ltd.: $1.2 billion.
- Taqa North Ltd.: $994 million.
Husky spokesman Mel Duvall says the company used accepted industry practices to estimate its worldwide abandonment liabilities as of the end of 2018 at $2.4 billion, with the majority of those costs related to properties in Alberta and Saskatchewan.
In April, the Alberta Liabilities Disclosure Project estimated the total cost to clean up all of Alberta’s oil and gas wells was $40 billion to $70 billion.
That’s considerably more than the Alberta Energy Regulator’s official estimate of $58.65 billion to clean up the wells — plus all pipelines and other energy infrastructure.