BARRHEAD - Currently, 61 oil and natural gas sites need to be decommissioned or reclaimed within the County of Barrhead.
That is what Orphan Well Association (OWA) president Lars De Pauw stated in a July 7 letter to reeve Doug Drozd.
Council passed the letter for information during its Aug. 15 meeting.
The OWA is an independent non-profit organization that operates under the delegated legal authority of the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER). The funding comes primarily from the upstream oil and gas industry through annual levies administered by the AER. Their mandate is to decommission old oil and gas infrastructure and return the land to its prior state.
Between 2020 and 2023, he said that the OWA invested more than $3 million in the county, hiring 116 vendors to work on 121 orphaned sites, with work ranging from inspection to decommissioning and remediation and reclamation.
De Pauw said in 2022/23, the typical cost for closing an orphan well site was about $60,000, but he admitted the specific costs for an individual site could vary depending on the complexity of the work required.
Of the 61 sites, 16 require decommissioning and reclamation work, while 45 need reclamation only.
Of those, he said, they have completed work on 19, or about 42 per cent, and are awaiting for vegetation to fully take root before applying for an AER reclamation certificate.
De Pauw also noted there are 237 inactive well-site leases in the county.
However, he said as the sites have solvent operators, they are not classified as orphaned and are not the OWA's responsibility.
De Pauw said that work in cleaning up orphaned and inactive well-lease sites has accelerated in the last two years due to investments by the provincial and federal governments, referring specifically to Alberta's site rehabilitation program (SRP).
The program provided grants of between 25 and 100 per cent of the cleanup cost of a site and was paid directly to the oilfield service company completing the work.
Funding for the $1 billion program came from the federal government.
De Pauw also referred to the province's $130 million loan the province made to the OWA, which the association has nearly repaid, he said, thanks to industry levies.
But he cautioned that even though the province's energy sector has rebounded due to higher and more stable prices, De Pauw stated that the industry is still feeling the "impact of a years-long downturn." As a result, he expects the OWA will see more orphaned wells added to their inventory.
