A longtime lawyer for landowners is warning something needs to change or else Albertans could be stuck with an $8-billion environmental cleanup of abandoned oil wells.
A combination of an Alberta court case, federal bankruptcy law and a lack of cleanup deadlines has ballooned the number of orphaned wells that are no longer the financial responsibility of oil companies, lawyer Keith Wilson told the Calgary Eyeopener on Monday.
“That creates a big problem because it begs the question of who’s going to pay to clean up all these many thousands of wells that are sitting out there on Alberta’s landscape,” he said.
Abandoned