Alberta Liabilities Disclosure Project

Direction from Alberta Premier Danielle Smith to her new energy minister suggests the United Conservative government hasn't given up on a controversial program that would see taxpayers backstop the cleanup of old oil and gas wells that companies are already legally required to do.

Critics fear Alberta's new United Conservative premier is preparing to bring in a program that would use billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded royalty breaks to subsidize energy companies to fulfil their legal duty and clean up old wells.

Most of Alberta's energy wells no longer hold enough oil and gas to pay for their cleanup and the public should take them over to ensure their remaining revenue funds remediation, a new report concludes.

A new report from the University of Calgary says inactive wells increased by more than 50 per cent between 2015 and 2020. The Alberta Energy Regulator expects another 6,014 of them in 2021.

A former provincial Liberal leader and member of the Alberta legislature says he won't pay his provincial taxes until oilpatch players pay theirs.

The amount of unpaid property taxes that oil and gas companies owe Alberta rural municipalities has more than doubled over the last year, a trend some are calling a tax revolt.