B.C. premier and energy minister announce $120M plan to clea
Thanos @ Thu May 14, 2020 12:17 pm
The governments made more than enough tax revenue off of fuel sales. They can kick in on the clean-up when it's necessary. Where did this fucking myth come from anyway, and why is it still alive, when it gets pointed out a million different fucking times that no one ran away with a ton of loot and left a wasteland behind them? There's multiple governments providing regulatory oversight and multiple governments taking taxes off of O&G, so enough of the bullshit that this industry has turned Canada into some kind of Chernobyl.
FieryVulpine @ Thu May 14, 2020 12:23 pm
DrCaleb DrCaleb:
We will have polite discussions, dammit!
whip.gif
whip.gif
Also, the lashings will continue until morale improves!
Scape @ Thu May 14, 2020 12:54 pm
Sticks and stones may break my bones but whips and chains excite me.
Freakinoldguy @ Thu May 14, 2020 12:57 pm
BeaverFever BeaverFever:
Freakinoldguy Freakinoldguy:
I wonder what the fuck they're really going to do with the money they're supposedly going to use to clean up these "orphaned and abandoned" wells. Especially in light of the fact that the oil companies are now required by law to do the exact same thing?
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/suprem ... -1.4998995
I don't know about the rest of the population but I'm getting sick and tired of disingenuous and unethical gov'ts thinking that every Canadian is a fucking moron that they can bullshit with their outright lies and twisted machinations without anyone noticing.
$1:
Energy companies must fulfil their environmental obligations before paying back creditors in the case of insolvency or bankruptcy, Canada's Supreme Court has ruled.
The top court's ruling released Thursday overturns two lower court decisions that said bankruptcy law has paramountcy over provincial environmental responsibilities in the case of Redwater Energy, which became insolvent in 2015. That meant energy companies could first pay back creditors before cleaning up old wells. In practical terms, that means energy companies could walk away from old oil and gas wells, leaving them someone else's responsibility.
The top court ruled 5-2 to overturn the earlier ruling. In doing that, it said bankruptcy is not a licence to ignore environmental regulations, and there is no inherent conflict between federal bankruptcy laws and provincial environmental regulations.
The top court's ruling released Thursday overturns two lower court decisions that said bankruptcy law has paramountcy over provincial environmental responsibilities in the case of Redwater Energy, which became insolvent in 2015. That meant energy companies could first pay back creditors before cleaning up old wells. In practical terms, that means energy companies could walk away from old oil and gas wells, leaving them someone else's responsibility.
The top court ruled 5-2 to overturn the earlier ruling. In doing that, it said bankruptcy is not a licence to ignore environmental regulations, and there is no inherent conflict between federal bankruptcy laws and provincial environmental regulations.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/suprem ... -1.4998995
I don't know about the rest of the population but I'm getting sick and tired of disingenuous and unethical gov'ts thinking that every Canadian is a fucking moron that they can bullshit with their outright lies and twisted machinations without anyone noticing.
Sorry, you don’t understand because you don’t know what you’re talking about. Your knee-jerk anti- government, pro-corporate response is quite lacking.
Your beloved oil industry are the ones who have been disingenuous and unethical here.
Let me spell it out for you: the court ruling only that says bankrupt companies who happen to have some cash remaining have to put that cash towards cleaning up orphaned oil wells before paying off creditors. Cant you understand that’s not the same thing as saying their orphaned wells will be paid for? If you leave a $50 million cleanup bill for your orphaned wells but only have $1 million in cash leftover after bankruptcy this court ruling only says it will have to go towards cleanup but where do you think the other $49 million is going to come from?
Also you seem blissfully unaware that there’s a massive backlog of unfunded orphaned wells from companies that have gone bankrupt in the past and were allowed to walk away without paying anything thanks to oil-friendly government shills that have your undying support.
http://www.canadaka.net/gallery
Beloved oil companies? Yup I do love the oil industry but only up to the point it's not taking money it isn't entitled to or isn't necessary to keep it a viable industry. A fact, which, if your beloved green lobby had the same standard would save the taxpayer a shit ton of money.
But hey, for some reason those moral standards only apply to BIG OIL. So, I'm going to take your your expected anti oil, anti western Canada rant with a grain of salt because you obviously let your biases override common sense.
Trudeau is giving big oil a pass and using out tax dollars to do it because he's destroying an industry and knows that the companies that he's going to drive out of Canada aren't going to pay for shit because he's bankrupting them, Supreme Court ruling or not.
$1:
Federal COVID-19 relief funds will aid in the clean up of dormant and orphan oil and gas sites in northern B.C., creating 1,200 jobs, but observers say the bad habit of leaving industry environmental liabilities to the taxpayer needs to end.
Calling orphan and inactive oil and gas wells “an environmental stain on British Columbia,” Premier John Horgan announced on Wednesday a plan to clean-up more than 2,000 wells and create 1,200 jobs in northern B.C.
Funding for B.C.’s plan will come from the federal government, which in April announced it will spend $1.7 billion to clean up orphan and inactive wells in Alberta, Saskatchewan and B.C.
Alberta received the lion’s share of the funding — $1.2 billion — while $400 million was designated for Saskatchewan and $120 million for B.C.
Horgan said the federal funding will help B.C. decommission, reclaim or restore oil and gas well sites, noting that B.C.’s Auditor General has repeatedly called on the oil and gas industry and the province “to clean up its act.”
“Today I’m happy to say, with a $120 million injection of funds from the federal government as part of their COVID-19 response — a welcome investment — we will be able to continue the clean-up of orphan wells,” the Premier told reporters.
The bulk of B.C.’s funding — $100 million — is for cleaning up dormant well sites that could still have owners, while $15 million is earmarked to clean up orphan well sites whose owners have gone bankrupt or can’t be found.
The remaining $5 million is tagged for a new program to address the legacy impacts of historical oil and gas activities.
“These are areas that continue to have environmental impacts, such as on wildlife habitat or traditional use by Indigenous peoples,” Bruce Ralston, B.C. Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources, told reporters.
Calling orphan and inactive oil and gas wells “an environmental stain on British Columbia,” Premier John Horgan announced on Wednesday a plan to clean-up more than 2,000 wells and create 1,200 jobs in northern B.C.
Funding for B.C.’s plan will come from the federal government, which in April announced it will spend $1.7 billion to clean up orphan and inactive wells in Alberta, Saskatchewan and B.C.
Alberta received the lion’s share of the funding — $1.2 billion — while $400 million was designated for Saskatchewan and $120 million for B.C.
Horgan said the federal funding will help B.C. decommission, reclaim or restore oil and gas well sites, noting that B.C.’s Auditor General has repeatedly called on the oil and gas industry and the province “to clean up its act.”
“Today I’m happy to say, with a $120 million injection of funds from the federal government as part of their COVID-19 response — a welcome investment — we will be able to continue the clean-up of orphan wells,” the Premier told reporters.
The bulk of B.C.’s funding — $100 million — is for cleaning up dormant well sites that could still have owners, while $15 million is earmarked to clean up orphan well sites whose owners have gone bankrupt or can’t be found.
The remaining $5 million is tagged for a new program to address the legacy impacts of historical oil and gas activities.
“These are areas that continue to have environmental impacts, such as on wildlife habitat or traditional use by Indigenous peoples,” Bruce Ralston, B.C. Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources, told reporters.
But this isn't so much about remediating these wells as it is about placating the natives, yet again.
This isn't just about remediating the wells that have been left abandoned for years. This disingenuous initiative will eventually include all wells that the oil companies have recently and will soon be forced to walk away from because of the anti oil anti western Canada sentiments shown by the current gov't and the central Canadian elitists.
Look at the terms used. They keep saying orphaned and abandoned wells. Well, alot of these abandoned wells aren't really abandoned they're really dormant wells that the oil companies were waiting to open up when our insane anti oil policies changed and we became a world player again. Now they'll be remediated with our tax dollars rather than opening them up.
But you might have noticed that the gov't is using funds that were never designed to be used in this manner to further this initiative. This also doesn't bode well for the oil industry as a whole. If the Federal gov't is willing to spend this kind of money to remediate wells it will eventually include wells that are operating now as Trudeau tries to force the end of the industry in the west by 2050 or earlier.
And if you don't believe the shutdown of the oil patch is their agenda they I'd suggest you read this.
https://calgaryherald.com/news/politics ... o-alberta/
I also wonder how much of this is because of the current threat from the Bloc and Greens about pulling their support unless Trudeau shuts down Alberta's oil industry.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/oil-is ... -1.5557725
BeaverFever @ Mon May 18, 2020 5:36 pm
Thanos Thanos:
The governments made more than enough tax revenue off of fuel sales. They can kick in on the clean-up when it's necessary. Where did this fucking myth come from anyway, and why is it still alive, when it gets pointed out a million different fucking times that no one ran away with a ton of loot and left a wasteland behind them? There's multiple governments providing regulatory oversight and multiple governments taking taxes off of O&G, so enough of the bullshit that this industry has turned Canada into some kind of Chernobyl.
The fund to clean up abandoned wells is massively underfunded its as simple as that. The fund was supposed to be financed by the oil industry not fro tax revenue needed for things like schools and hospitals but as usual the individual was pandered to its as simple as that.
BeaverFever @ Mon May 18, 2020 6:47 pm
Freakinoldguy Freakinoldguy:
Trudeau is giving big oil a pass and using out tax dollars to do it because he's destroying an industry and knows that the companies that he's going to drive out of Canada aren't going to pay for shit because he's bankrupting them, Supreme Court ruling or not.
You still sound like you don’t know what you’re talking about.You’re confusing the cleanup of wells left behind by companies and prospectors ALREADY bankrupt(some from decades ago) with existing companies already in operation
You also don’t make sense. Trudeau wants to bankrupt the oil companies but wants to also “give them a pass”?
Also you don’t seem to understand what the Supreme Court ruling was about, which is that bankrupt company's’ assets (if they have any) must go towards orphaned wells first before anyone else can claim them. Your argument that bankrupt companies’ assets wont be distributed under bankruptcy rules because they'll be bankrupt doesn’t make much sense does it?
$1:
Federal COVID-19 relief funds will aid in the clean up of dormant and orphan oil and gas sites in northern B.C., creating 1,200 jobs, but observers say the bad habit of leaving industry environmental liabilities to the taxpayer needs to end.
This article calls for a harder, not softer approach with oil companies, you got that right?
$1:
But this isn't so much about remediating these wells as it is about placating the natives, yet again.
Whar do you base that on exactly?
$1:
This isn't just about remediating the wells that have been left abandoned for years. This disingenuous initiative will eventually include all wells that the oil companies have recently and will soon be forced to walk away from because of the anti oil anti western Canada sentiments shown by the current gov't and the central Canadian elitists.
Look at the terms used. They keep saying orphaned and abandoned wells. Well, alot of these abandoned wells aren't really abandoned they're really dormant wells that the oil companies were waiting to open up when our insane anti oil policies changed and we became a world player again. Now they'll be remediated with our tax dollars rather than opening them up.
But you might have noticed that the gov't is using funds that were never designed to be used in this manner to further this initiative. This also doesn't bode well for the oil industry as a whole. If the Federal gov't is willing to spend this kind of money to remediate wells it will eventually include wells that are operating now as Trudeau tries to force the end of the industry in the west by 2050 or earlier.
Look at the terms used. They keep saying orphaned and abandoned wells. Well, alot of these abandoned wells aren't really abandoned they're really dormant wells that the oil companies were waiting to open up when our insane anti oil policies changed and we became a world player again. Now they'll be remediated with our tax dollars rather than opening them up.
But you might have noticed that the gov't is using funds that were never designed to be used in this manner to further this initiative. This also doesn't bode well for the oil industry as a whole. If the Federal gov't is willing to spend this kind of money to remediate wells it will eventually include wells that are operating now as Trudeau tries to force the end of the industry in the west by 2050 or earlier.
That’s quite a far fetched conspiracy theory. You seem to have completely missed the fact that these orphan well programs are provincial programs, some of them have been around for a long time, just underfunded. The feds are just giving the provinces money towards it. You missed that, didn’t you?
And if I look at the BC program for example , a well has to be inactive for 5 consecutive years to be considered dormant
bootlegga @ Tue May 19, 2020 8:00 am
Thanos Thanos:
The governments made more than enough tax revenue off of fuel sales. They can kick in on the clean-up when it's necessary. Where did this fucking myth come from anyway, and why is it still alive, when it gets pointed out a million different fucking times that no one ran away with a ton of loot and left a wasteland behind them? There's multiple governments providing regulatory oversight and multiple governments taking taxes off of O&G, so enough of the bullshit that this industry has turned Canada into some kind of Chernobyl.
Why is it that I have to pay for the cleanup of my electronics and other items, but O&G companies can rely on the government to pick up their slack?
The industry is supposed to pay for orphan/abandoned wells, not the taxpayer.
Why can North Dakota get this right and so many provinces in Canada get this so wrong?
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/albert ... -1.5433603
This is just another BS way O&G corporations privatize profits and socialize losses.
Thanos @ Tue May 19, 2020 8:15 am
Canada's profited in uncountable billions in terms of the revenue made off of O&G. Canada can kick in to clean up, especially when the current government has done so much to cripple the industry with it's excessively punitive new regulatory regime. Most of the clean-up remediation isn't even all that bad, with the majority of the old wells merely needing removal of existing equipment, plugging of the bore hole, and some soil removal. It's not like being asked to clean-up some EPA Superfund toxic site in the US at old industry spots where nothing can be done on the land for a couple hundred years because of the poisons that were deliberately dumped without a care. Or, to keep it Canadian-centric, how about talking once in a while about how the mining companies have walked away from their own toxic disasters all across this country and left the governments liable for the clean-up. Think that's worth mentioning once in a while instead of the usual finding of villainy in Alberta only?
How about we get a complaint once in a while about "social programs not being funded" because of the endless giveaways of taxpayer dollars to Bombardier? That too much to ask for, if we're going to play the "MY tax dollars!" game, about an undeserving company receiving endless breaks from the federal government only because they're politically critical to the needs of the party currently in power?
Zipperfish @ Tue May 19, 2020 8:37 am
I don't know about oil, but there is certainly a lot of metal mines that have been abandoned, leaving tax payers on the hook. The liability for thousands of contaminated sites on federal / northern lands in Canada is estimated at $4B. Of those sites, 2 mines--Faro and Giant--account for $2B.
You do have to put up a bond to open a mine in BC, in case they walk away, but the bond never covers the price of mitigation or remediation. Right now we're dealing with a pulp mill in BC that Chinese investors bought and then walked away from, leaving thousands of gallons of various toxic chemicals stored in tanks of various states of disrepair. Bill will be high for that one.
bootlegga @ Tue May 19, 2020 9:47 am
Thanos Thanos:
Canada's profited in uncountable billions in terms of the revenue made off of O&G. Canada can kick in to clean up, especially when the current government has done so much to cripple the industry with it's excessively punitive new regulatory regime. Most of the clean-up remediation isn't even all that bad, with the majority of the old wells merely needing removal of existing equipment, plugging of the bore hole, and some soil removal. It's not like being asked to clean-up some EPA Superfund toxic site in the US at old industry spots where nothing can be done on the land for a couple hundred years because of the poisons that were deliberately dumped without a care. Or, to keep it Canadian-centric, how about talking once in a while about how the mining companies have walked away from their own toxic disasters all across this country and left the governments liable for the clean-up. Think that's worth mentioning once in a while instead of the usual finding of villainy in Alberta only?
How about we get a complaint once in a while about "social programs not being funded" because of the endless giveaways of taxpayer dollars to Bombardier? That too much to ask for, if we're going to play the "MY tax dollars!" game, about an undeserving company receiving endless breaks from the federal government only because they're politically critical to the needs of the party currently in power?
How about we get a complaint once in a while about "social programs not being funded" because of the endless giveaways of taxpayer dollars to Bombardier? That too much to ask for, if we're going to play the "MY tax dollars!" game, about an undeserving company receiving endless breaks from the federal government only because they're politically critical to the needs of the party currently in power?
If Canada has "profited in uncountable billions in terms of the revenue made off of O&G", how much have the O&G companies made (or mining companies)?
Hundreds of billions? Trillions? Lord knows they were making so much money here during the boom they couldn't spend it fast enough.
The government made a fraction of what corporations do on their projects, usually because of all the tax credits and breaks handed out like Halloween candy to any company that promised to invest in resource development or manufacturing in Canada (Bombardier falls in this group too).
I think the industry that pollutes - and yes that includes mining companies, farming conglomerates, manufacturers, and all the other industrial polluters - need to pay for the shit they leave behind after they shut down a mine, well, or factory.
It's one of the biggest reasons I'm against using nuclear power to fuel the oil sands - because I know that any company that builds one will walk away from the clean after they shut the plant down.
Unfortunately, historically our governments (left and right) have let them walk away and then been forced to pay for the clean-up after the party is over.
Thanos @ Tue May 19, 2020 11:36 am
In that case you should be on the side of the oilsands because they're generations ahead of all the other industries you mentioned in terms of environmental remediation. Keep those companies alive up there because if they die out, as Trudeau/Butts want, then there'll be no one to do the remediation except for the governments.
BTW, I'm not some shill for O&G. I'm just stating factually-provable things that run counter to the environmentalist radical narrative. It isn't Mordor out here, no matter how many times they can get their pet celebrities to keep saying it is. They're lying out their asses about us and that's what makes me hate them more and more every time the spout out with more of their falsehoods.