The number of orphan wells fell in 2022, according to a report released by the Alberta Energy Regulator yesterday.
The oil industry oversight group released its inaugural Liability Management Performance Report on Wednesday, which found a nine per cent drop in the number of inactive wells during 2022 – going from 91,000 to 83,000 wells province-wide.
Alberta’s oil and gas producers spent nearly $700 million in 2022 on cleaning up the hundreds of thousands of old wells that dot the province, including several that are in the Peace Region.
That’s 65 per cent more than they were required to spend under provincial rules and they took 8,000 inactive wells off the books, the report says.
But the report also acknowledges serious information gaps and suggests 2022’s closure totals may have been a one-off.
It also repeats a figure of $33 billion worth of environmental liability from the remaining wells — a figure critics say is far too low and based on old cost estimates the auditor general has already criticized.
– Kyle Moore, Trending 55 Newsroom
