Royalty credits to cover clean up costs of abandoned wells in Alberta? Why is this even being considered for an industry that has a responsibility and has made millions of profits while avoiding that responsibility.
Why should our potential tax revenue be reduced to encourage the oil industry to fulfill their responsibilities to clean up their messes. And many of the projected benefits of such a program would leave Alberta with no real way of ensuring enforcement.
Better yet would be to seize the profit-producing assets of the companies that have been delinquent in accepting responsibility for the abandoned well sites and hold those assets until such cleanup has been done to an acceptable standard.
In addition the government could withhold issuing any further exploration and development permits to such companies. Or why not increase the government's share of royalties to an extent that such cleanup costs will be covered in advance.
It’s time to stop catering to Big Oil and insist that they pay their fair share in protecting our environment. There are much better options to ensure proper cleanup of abandoned wells than to make the Alberta taxpayers take the hit by giving away our share of the royalties.
It would seem that Alberta has need of a leadership that has the courage to do the right thing for all Albertans and not just the wealthy few who own or have shares in oil and gas producing companies.
Darrel Florence,
Cremona
