{"id":50140,"date":"2019-12-16T07:52:44","date_gmt":"2019-12-16T12:52:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=50140"},"modified":"2019-12-16T07:52:48","modified_gmt":"2019-12-16T12:52:48","slug":"crazy-days-in-alberta-the-poison-wells-file","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=50140","title":{"rendered":"Crazy Days in Alberta: The Poison Wells File"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thetyee.ca\/Analysis\/2019\/12\/16\/Alberta-Poison-Wells-File\/\">Crazy Days in Alberta: The Poison Wells File<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>The province let oil and gas firms create a $100-billion disaster. They expect you to foot the bill.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/thetyee.ca\/Analysis\/2019\/12\/15\/GaryMar.jpg\" alt=\"GaryMar.jpg\"\/><figcaption>Gary Mar, when an Alberta politician, helped shield the oil and gas industry from having to deal with old, leaking wells. Now as an industry lobbyist, he says all Canadians should pay for the mess.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Every day something crazy happens in Alberta to illustrate how thoroughly oil politics have eroded the province\u2019s grip on reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Judy Aldous, who hosts a province-wide CBC Radio noon show, recently&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/listen\/live-radio\/1-1-alberta-at-noon\/clip\/15748800-orphan-wells\">devoted an hour<\/a>&nbsp;to one particularly crazy item \u2014 orphaned and unreclaimed wells in Alberta.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Guest Gary Mar, CEO of the Petroleum Services Association of Canada,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/calgaryherald.com\/opinion\/columnists\/varcoe-alberta-seeks-ottawas-help-and-money-in-cleaning-up-abandoned-wells\">argued<\/a>&nbsp;that federal taxpayers fund tax credits for the oilpatch worth $700 million over three years to help pay for the cleanup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cAll Canadians benefited from this industry and all&nbsp;Canadians should be part of the solution,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">An average listener unaware of the history of the province\u2019s derelict well, pipeline and gas plant liability problem might have concluded Mar was being reasonable.<a href=\"http:\/\/support.thetyee.ca\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The&nbsp;Tyee&nbsp;is&nbsp;supported by&nbsp;readers&nbsp;like&nbsp;you&nbsp;Join us and grow independent&nbsp;media in&nbsp;Canada<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But Mar, a former provincial Conservative cabinet minister, was really asking for taxpayer\u2019s money to make up for 43 years of misrule by Tory governments. They created the current crisis by failing to require oil and gas companies to provide security deposits to cover their cleanup responsibilities, and by allowing them to put off remediation of inactive wells indefinitely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That\u2019s how crazy the situation has become in Alberta. Taxpayers are being asked to pay for the failures of government and oil and gas companies by a former politician whose party was responsible for the problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Crazy Days in Alberta: The Poison Wells File The province let oil and gas firms create a $100-billion disaster. They expect you to foot the bill. Every day something crazy happens in Alberta to illustrate how thoroughly oil politics have eroded the province\u2019s grip on reality. Judy Aldous, who hosts a province-wide CBC Radio noon [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[28681,1082,5549,1729,23884],"class_list":["post-50140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","category-environment","tag-abandoned-oil-and-gas-wells","tag-alberta","tag-andrew-nikiforuk","tag-oil-and-gas-industry","tag-thetyee-ca"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50140"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50141,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50140\/revisions\/50141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}