RIP

Canadian actor Gordon Pinsent, who starred in 'Away From Her,' has died at 92

Actor Gordon Pinsent poses for a portrait in his Toronto home on February 27, 2018. 

(THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young)

Lee-Anne Goodman
The Canadian Press
Published Feb. 26, 2023 

Gordon Pinsent, the adored Canadian actor whose career hit its peak well into his 70s with an award-winning performance as the heartbroken husband in “Away From Her,” has died.

Pinsent died on Saturday evening at age 92, his friend actor Mark Critch confirmed.

The Newfoundland native, a household name in Canada for decades after his many appearances on stage and screen, became known internationally after his Genie Award-winning turn as Grant in Sarah Polley's acclaimed directorial debut.


His dignified portrayal so impressed Daniel Day-Lewis, who went on to win the best actor Oscar in 2008 for “There Will Be Blood,” that he sent an email to Polley praising Pinsent's performance as one of the most “astonishing” he'd ever seen.

Those types of kudos tickled the modest Pinsent. Well into the final years of his life, the actor remained mischievous, giggly and often as giddy as a schoolboy whenever any praise was sent his way.

“Now you see, I don't talk that way about myself, so I was pleased — it was just terrific,” Pinsent said with a laugh in an interview with The Canadian Press of Day-Lewis's email and the continuing raves he was getting for “Away From Her,” especially since he didn't garner the kind of international awards recognition some critics said he deserved for the role.

Pinsent was "suave, classy elegant, well-spoken," said Critch, a fellow Newfoundlander and family friend who says he became close with Pinsent after working they worked together on a YouTube project.

Actors in Canada are following "on a path that (Pinsent) cut through a forest," said Critch in a phone interview.

"He never forgot anything. Like he would call you on Christmas, he'd call you on your birthday, he'd call you on Father's Day, and we'd have a Facetime or a call," said Critch.

"I will miss my great mentor and this hero, this giant colossus of Canadian entertainment, but I'll miss my friend Gordon Pinsent from Newfoundland because he was an even better friend than he was an actor," said Critch.


Born in Grand Falls, N.L., in 1930, Pinsent was the youngest of six children born to Stephen Pinsent, a papermill worker and cobbler, and his wife, Flossie.

The actor described himself as an awkward child who once suffered from rickets. His schoolmates called him “Porky.”

But by the age of 17, the previously shy Pinsent had discovered acting, and was soon performing in stage productions in Newfoundland and then further afield, in Winnipeg. Possessing a deep baritone, Pinsent also took on roles in radio drama on the CBC, and before long moved on to film and television too.

In the early 1950s, Pinsent took a break from acting and joined the Canadian Army, serving for about four years.

But acting remained his true love, and he became a stalwart on some children's shows in the early 1960s, including CBC's “The Forest Rangers.” He went on to appear in dozens of Canada's best-known television shows, including “The Red Green Show,” “Due South,” “Wind at My Back” and Paul Gross's “H20: The Last Prime Minister.”

Pinsent's film resume was equally impressive. He wrote and starred in “The Rowdyman,” a Canadian classic about a troubled Newfoundlander whose best intentions go unnoticed by those closest to him.

Pinsent also had memorable roles in “Who Has Seen The Wind” and “The Shipping News,” a major Hollywood production starring Kevin Spacey, Julianne Moore and Cate Blanchett. Pinsent played newspaperman Billy Pretty in the 2001 film, and also cheerfully provided lessons in perfecting the Newfoundland accent to the rest of the cast.

In 2013 he starred in Don McKellar's acclaimed Newfoundland-set comedy "The Grand Seduction," which earned him a Canadian Screen Award for best supporting actor.

But it was “Away From Her,” a role that came to him when he was 76, that truly sealed his reputation as a “national institution,” as Polley once described him.

The actress and director said from the moment she finished reading the Alice Munro short story, “The Bear Came Over The Mountain,” she envisioned a film starring Pinsent as Grant, the bewildered husband who loses his wife of 45 years not just to Alzheimer's, but to another man. Pinsent was happy to oblige.

“She didn't have much convincing to do,” Pinsent said in an interview in February 2007. “You know, you can be a working actor in this country all your life, and it's just terrific, but you don't always get the stuff that's a bit more challenging.”

“Away From Her” was particularly poignant for him - his own wife of 45 years, actress Charmion King, died just a couple of months before the film's mainstream release, forcing Pinsent to re-examine the many themes of quiet despair explored in “Away From Her.”

“It was something I wasn't necessarily drawing on except in the general sense of how anyone must feel at a certain time of life after spending so many years with a partner,” an emotional Pinsent said during the interview, conducted just a few weeks after King's death from emphysema.

“It's almost impossible to grasp ... how do you prepare? Where does love go? Where do you go, the leftover?”

King and Pinsent had one child together, actress Leah Pinsent. Pinsent also had two children from an earlier marriage, Barry and Beverly.

Leah Pinsent was extremely close to her father, accompanying him to many events in the aftermath of her mother's death and honouring him in June 2007 when he was inducted into the Canadian Walk of Fame. She described her father as her “truest inspiration and one of my best friends” at the event.

Pinsent, for his part, brought the house down with his joke about fellow inductees Nickelback, the Alberta rock band.

“Nickelback! What can you say? I've got all their LPs and 45s!” he said as the crowd roared.

Pinsent's sense of humour, in fact, was one of his most endearing qualities, and was in full force during the making of “Away From Her.”

At a pre-Genie brunch honouring the film in March 2008, Pinsent told of hijinks involving his co-star, Julie Christie, an animal rights activist and environmentalist.

He came to the set one day and told Christie that he'd bought a Prius, the environmentally friendly electric automobile favoured by celebrities.

“She said: ‘Good for you, Gordon.' And I told her how quiet the car was, and how lovely that was, and she agreed. And then I said: ‘All the better for sneaking up on the baby seals!' And she wasn't too happy about that.”

But for all the outpouring of praise and admiration for Pinsent in the wake of “Away From Her,” movie offers didn't come pouring in after its release. He got passed up for a role in a Tom Cruise film, and turned down a part in a Luke Wilson movie.

“I suppose if I was out there pounding the pavement and working rooms, there might be more coming my way, but that's just not me,” Pinsent said. “I don't work rooms anymore. I tried that as a younger man and didn't like it very much.”

After his role in the 1968 Steve McQueen movie, “The Thomas Crown Affair,” and playing the U.S. president in the Milos Forman film, “Colossus: The Forbin Project,” Pinsent and King lived in L.A. for six years in an attempt to launch his Hollywood career.

“I did a lot of stuff, a few movies, four pilots that didn't go anywhere, but I was brought down to play the president in ‘Colossus,' the Forman project that became kind of a cult thing with university students. So I decided to hang out down there for awhile, but it was because I started to write that I came back,” he recalled.

“I wanted to work where I wanted to live. You could spend three or four lifetimes down there, just standing around waiting for something, waiting for good material to happen.”

Pinsent, in fact, wrote his novel “The Rowdyman” while he was in Los Angeles, but wanted to film it in his beloved Newfoundland. The Pinsents returned to Canada and stayed put.

“I had a chance to sell it down there but didn't. I wanted to do it on my own home turf, and it cost very little — it was coffee money for most movies, and it was great to be home.”

Throughout his life, in fact, the actor remained devoted to his native province, returning two or three times a year to visit his brothers.

“I kind of need to go there a lot,” Pinsent said. “I began to write from that place, from that perspective. But the family used to be much larger; it's dwindled now, even though my nephews and nieces make up half the island.”

Pinsent's lifelong passion for creating never faded — in 2018 he released a short film he wrote and self-funded called "Martin's Hagge," about a middle-aged writer burdened by a personified version of anxiety and depression.

“I really love writing ... writing is good, it's even better than good when you hit those peaks, and it's the same feeling oddly enough in acting. It's that lovely thing where you get that zone, that peak of joy, and it reminds you of why you started it all.”

-With files from Jessica Smith in Toronto

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As EV batteries consume more lithium, report warns against increased mining of it

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Reducing reliance on personal vehicles, more public transit 

can cut emissions faster: author

Jason Vermes · CBC Radio · Posted: Feb 25, 2023 

Batteries destined for Volkswagen electric cars stand stacked at a Dresden, Germany, production facility. Lithium is increasingly needed for the batteries that power electric vehicles. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

The growing need for lithium — a mined metal used in batteries to power electric vehicles (EVs) — could have significant international environmental and social impacts if the U.S. doesn't reimagine its transportation policy, according to a recent report.

Lithium, listed as a "critical mineral" by several governments and agencies, is an integral part of the transition away from fossil fuels. 

While demand is exploding because of EVs, it's also used in batteries for energy storage systems, and smaller products like smartphone and e-bike batteries.

Targets in the U.S. call for half of all new vehicles sold to be electric by 2030. Canada's plan is even more ambitious, with 60 per cent electrified sales of new vehicles by 2030 — and 100 per cent fully-electric by 2035.

Efforts to replace fuel-powered cars with electrified versions, without reimagining public and active transport infrastructure programs, however, would require three times the current global production of lithium for the U.S. alone, says Thea Riofrancos, a co-author of the report, in an interview with What On Earth's Laura Lynch.

Lithium mine workers move salt byproduct at a lithium mine in the Atacama Desert in Salar de Atacama, Chile. (John Moore/Getty Images)

That, she says, could have harmful effects on the environment, climate change mitigation and Indigenous communities beyond the U.S.

"If we want to reduce our vulnerability to these supply chains, as well as reduce the impact of mining, all the more reason to get folks into e-bikes and buses as much as possible," said Riofrancos, associate professor of political science at Providence College in Rhode Island.

"It'll actually cut emissions faster if we don't try to replicate the car-dependent transportation system as we move into a new energy system."

While governments are promoting industries that support the transition to greener sources of energy, cars remain a popular — and, for some, the only — option for Canadians. Meanwhile, mining insiders say the industry is moving toward more sustainable approaches to unearthing critical minerals.

• WHAT ON EARTH?
  Canada is racing to net zero. But do we have the data to get us there?

• Nickel is a key element of electric vehicles — but mining it takes an environmental toll

Fewer cars, more transit says report

The report laid out four scenarios as the world moves toward transport electrification, from worst to best case.

In the worst-case scenario, car ownership, urban sprawl and public transport programs remain unchanged. The need for lithium for EV batteries continues to grow, particularly as battery capacities grow for larger vehicles like electric pickup trucks.

In the best-case scenario, governments would use policy and funding levers to "nudge" people toward taking transit or a bike to work and the grocery store, while some continue to use EVs. It would also bring battery sizes of vehicles for the North American market in line with global averages, meaning smaller vehicles.

The latter would require 92 per cent less lithium by the year 2050 compared to the former.

"We don't think the best-case scenario is immediately achievable," said Riofrancos. "But it does, I think, give us a sense of the realm of possibility [to] then think about how to use policy and advocacy to bring us closer to that best case scenario."

WATCH | Natural resources minister says country must move faster on mining:

"We have to go faster. It cannot take us 12 to 15 years to permit new mines in this country if we want to successfully advance the energy transition," said Natural Resource Minister Jonathan Wilkinson as the federal government released its critical minerals strategy Friday.

Lana Eagle, a mining consultant who connects with Indigenous communities with the industry, says that while policies may change to limit the size of EV batteries, or the number of vehicles sold, Canada's vast geography means a one-size-fits-all approach won't work for the entire country.

"I live in British Columbia. There are a lot of remote and rural communities. I can't see how an electric bus is going to fulfil the lives of people living in those different areas," she said. 

"So while there may be a push to a policy that wants to put fewer vehicles on the road, I think you really have to consider where do people live and how do they get by, and how are we going to manage that."

Federal critical minerals strategy

In Canada, the federal government released its critical minerals strategy in December, setting a path toward increased production of 31 minerals and metals.

Of those 31 minerals, six — lithium, graphite, nickel, cobalt, copper and rare earth elements — are being prioritized. All but copper are needed for building batteries.

"Simply put, there is no green energy transition without critical minerals," Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said last year when he unveiled the strategy in Vancouver.

• Ottawa's critical mineral strategy calls for faster project approvals

Mining for lithium can be incredibly water intensive. The process can involve releasing water from aquifers and leaving it to evaporate in what's known as salt flats. What's left is a variety of minerals and metals, including lithium, that is then gathered and processed.

It's a common practice in South America, where Argentina, Chile and Bolivia are among the world's top producers.

Lithium is mined in some parts of the world by extracting water into salt ponds and letting the liquid evaporate until all that's left is the metal. (Pablo Cozzaglio/AFP/Getty Images)

"It has created a lot of resistance around Indigenous groups in the area because their ecosystems are drying," said Teresa Kramarz, assistant professor at the University of Toronto School of Environment and co-director of the Environmental Governance Lab, in an interview with The Current guest host Duncan McCue.

Kramarz notes that projections indicate Canada will need to produce 40 times the current amount of lithium by 2040 to keep up with demand.

"That is because we are thinking about a status quo scenario in which we just simply do everything that we're doing in terms of using fossil fuel for cars [and] we switch to just electric mobility. 

"That is a choice. That is a policy choice."

Greener mining alternatives

Mining proponents say that lithium mining can be done in a more sustainable way, and with greater input from Indigenous stakeholders.

Common Good Mining, a startup company where Eagle is a board member and vice-president of Indigenous affairs, operates what they call "tiny" mines. 

The operations — which are currently mining for nickel, copper and zinc in British Columbia — do not create large open pits or underground shafts. Rather, they drill holes into the earth and extract minerals that way.

"Ten years from now, people will never know we've been there," said Eagle. They have yet to mine lithium, she noted.

Reducing the reliance on personal vehicles, in favour of transit and active transport like biking, can help reduce emissions faster, says Thea Riofrancos. (Gillian Flaccus/The Associated Press)

Chris Doornbos, president and CEO of E3 Lithium based in Alberta, says his company's method operates as a closed-loop system. 

Lithium-enriched water is extracted from the ground and pushed through a series of pipes where the metal is extracted. It's then sent back into the aquifer. Doornbos says the extracted water never comes into contact with freshwater, and the land use is only three per cent of an evaporative pond.

"Canada has a really big part to play in developing a critical minerals supply chain. We have good governance in Canada, a secure jurisdiction and we have the resources," he told The Current.

Gen Z driving less

As Canada moves forward with its critical minerals strategy, Riofrancos says there are already shifts in car ownership among younger generations.

"Generation Z is less and less interested in car ownership — finds it expensive and unsustainable and all sorts of things," she said.

"So even from a political angle, I think there's reasons to think about different types of transportation policies."

• Hailed as green energy source, northern Quebec lithium project divides Cree

• Caution urged as mining companies eye critical minerals beneath Quebec boreal forest

And while her report focused on lithium requirements for the U.S. market, she says that reimagining transportation north of the border can help reduce emissions faster — and create a more equitable society.

"What I would like to see is to see the climate movement, kind of as a whole, think about transit and transportation policy and land use policy as some of those critical things we can advocate for as we're looking ahead to a zero-emissions future," she said.

---

Interview with Thea Riofrancos produced by What On Earth's Molly Segal. The Current segment produced by Julie Crysler and Allison Dempster.

Pipeline debate at center of California carbon capture plans


Michael Phillis And Kathleen Ronayne
The Associated Press
Feb. 25, 2023 

A worker walks near pumpjacks operating at the Kern River Oil Field in Bakersfield, Calif.

 The oil and gas industry’s emissions are a main cause of climate change and in the past the industry undermined sound evidence that carbon greenhouse gases warm the atmosphere. 

(AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)

SACRAMENTO, CALIF. -

In its latest ambitious roadmap to tackle climate change, California relies on capturing carbon out of the air and storing it deep underground on a scale that's not yet been seen in the United States.

The plan -- advanced by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom's administration -- comes just as the Biden administration has boosted incentives for carbon capture projects in an effort to spur more development nationwide. Ratcheting up 20 years of climate efforts, Newsom last year signed a law requiring California to remove as much carbon from the air as it emits by 2045 -- one of the world's fastest timelines for achieving so-called carbon neutrality. He directed the powerful California Air Resources Board to drastically reduce the use of fossil fuels and build massive amounts of carbon dioxide capture and storage.

To achieve its climate goals, California must rapidly transform an economy that's larger than most nations, but fierce opposition to carbon capture from environmental groups and concerns about how to safely transport the gas may delay progress -- practical and political obstacles the Democratic-led Legislature must now navigate.

Last year, the California state legislature passed a law that says no carbon dioxide may flow through new pipelines until the federal government finishes writing stronger safety regulations, a process that could take years. As a potential backup, the law directed the California Natural Resources Agency to write its own pipeline standards for lawmakers to consider, a report now more than three weeks overdue.

While there are other ways to transport carbon dioxide gas besides pipelines, such as trucks or ships, pipelines are considered key to making carbon capture happen at the level California envisions. Newsom said the state must capture 100 million metric tons of carbon each year by 2045 -- about a quarter of what the state now emits annually.

"We do not expect to see (carbon capture and storage) happen at a large scale unless we are able to address that pipeline issue," said Rajinder Sahota, deputy executive officer for climate change and research at the air board.

State Sen. Anna Caballero, who authored the carbon capture legislation, said the state's goal will be to create a safety framework that's even more robust than what the federal government will develop. But she downplayed any urgent need to move forward with pipeline rules, saying smaller projects that don't require movement over long distances can start in the meantime.

"We don't need pipelines across different properties right now," she said.

Last year's Inflation Reduction Act increases federal funding for carbon capture, boosting payouts from $50 to $85 per ton for capturing carbon dioxide from industrial plants and storing it underground. There are also federal grants and state incentives.

Without clarity on the state's pipeline plans, the state is putting itself at a "competitive disadvantage" when it comes to attracting projects, said Sam Brown, a former attorney at the Environmental Protection Agency and partner at law firm Hunton Andrews Kurth.

If the pipeline moratorium slows projects for three or four years, Brown said, "why would you put your money into those projects in California when you can do it in Texas or Louisiana or somewhere else?"

The geology for storing carbon dioxide gas is rare, but California has it in parts of the Central Valley, a vast expanse of agricultural land running down the center of the state.

Oil and gas company California Resources Corp. is developing a project there to create hydrogen. It plans to capture carbon from that hydrogen facility and the natural gas plant that powers it. The carbon dioxide would then be stored in an old oil field. That doesn't require special pipeline approval because it's all happening within the company's property.

But the company also wants to store emissions from other industries like manufacturing and transportation. Transporting that would rely on pipelines that can't be built yet.

"These are parts of the economy that have to be decarbonized," said Chris Gould, the company's executive vice president and chief sustainability officer. "It makes economic sense to do it."

Safety concerns increased in 2020 after a pipeline in Mississippi ruptured in a landslide, releasing a heavier-than-air plume of carbon dioxide that displaced oxygen near the ground. Forty-five people were treated at a hospital, and several lost consciousness thousands of miles of carbon dioxide pipelines operating across the country and industry proponents call the event an anomaly. But the Mississippi rupture prompted federal regulators to explore tightening the existing rules for carbon pipelines.

Lupe Martinez, who lives in California's Kern County, worries what will happen as developers target the region for carbon storage.

He used to spray fields with pesticides without protective equipment. On windy days, he'd be soaked in chemicals. Martinez, who watched some of his fellow workers later fight cancer, says he was lied to about safety then and doesn't believe promises that carbon capture is safe now.

"They treat us like guinea pigs," said Martinez, a longtime labour activist.

The oil and gas industry's emissions are a main cause of climate change and in the past the industry undermined sound evidence that greenhouse gases are deeply disturbing the climate. Now carbon capture -- unproven as a major climate solution -- will help the industry keep polluting in places that are already heavily polluted, environmentalists argue. Instead of shutting down fossil fuel plants, carbon capture will increase their profits and extend their life, said Catherine Garoupa, executive director of the Central Valley Air Quality Coalition.

But advocates of carbon capture say it's essential for Kern County oil and gas companies to find new ways to make money and keep people employed as California moves away from fossil fuels, an industry that is the "very fabric" of the region's identity, said Lorelei Oviatt, director of Kern County Planning and Natural Resources.

Without a new revenue source like carbon capture, "Kern County will be the next Gary, Indiana," she said, referring to the rust belt's years-ago collapse.

There are currently no active carbon capture projects in California. To demonstrate the technology is viable and people can get permits for it, it's essential to build the first projects, said George Peridas, director of carbon management partnerships at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories.

Peridas said one area with potential to store carbon dioxide is the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, a vast estuary on the western edge of the Central Valley that's a vital source of drinking water and an ecologically sensitive home to hundreds of species.

A levee-ringed island of farmland in the region that's nearly half the size of Manhattan would be an ideal place for storing carbon dioxide safely, Peridas said.

Tom Zuckerman, who represents the islands' owners on the project and is an owner himself, recently submitted a federal permit application for a project to capture emissions from an ethanol plant in Stockton, ship it by barge nearly 10 miles down the San Joaquin River and sequester it deep beneath the island. The project doesn't need a pipeline so it isn't affected by the ban. He hopes it will be up and running in a few years.

"If we are going to be doing much of significance about reducing greenhouse gases in this country, areas like this are going to be critical," Zuckerman said.

------

Phillis reported from St. Louis.

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EXPLAINER
Alberta wants to subsidize oil and gas companies to clean up their mess. Here’s what you need to know

The proposed pilot oil and gas cleanup incentive program — first pitched to the government by Alberta Premier Danielle Smith when she was an industry lobbyist — has led to a barrage of criticism from banks and economists

By Drew Anderson
Feb. 23, 2023 

The Alberta government is under fire for a proposed pilot program that would give financial incentives to oil and gas companies to clean up old wells littered across the province.

The plan, championed by Premier Danielle Smith, has been attacked as a corporate giveaway for immensely profitable companies and a violation of the polluter pay principle.

The Globe and Mail dubbed it “corporate welfare for the oil industry.” The Toronto Star reported the program “hits a nerve in Alberta.” Others mused that the “Danielle Smith handout might be a step too far for Albertans.” The controversy isn’t going away.

Smith first proposed the idea back in 2021, when she was lobbying the government. After she became premier, she announced she would move ahead with her idea.

 Backlash began to build.

On Wednesday, the premier released a statement pushing back on what she called “inaccurate claims” about the program, but it did little to shed more light on the program or to quell critics.

Here’s what you need to know about Alberta’s latest plan, officially dubbed the Site Liability Incentive Program, to clean up its tens of thousands of old oil and gas wells.
How will Danielle Smith’s oil well cleanup program work?

The Alberta government says it wants to pursue a pilot program over three years that could offer $100 million in royalty credits to companies that clean up inactive, suspended or partially abandoned wells at least 20 years old and drilled prior to 1980. In industry parlance, an “abandoned” well is one that has been safely sealed and is not the same as an “orphan” well, which has been left behind by its rightful owner.

There are currently no timelines to ensure oil and gas companies clean up old wells as they’re legally required to do. The Alberta government is proposing a pilot program that incentivizes them to do their work by paying them for it. 

How exactly those credits will be applied — and how much money companies will get in the form of credits — is yet to be determined. The proposed program is currently open for feedback, so the details aren’t finalized, but the government has started consultation and provided an outline of its plans. But companies that clean up old wells would be eligible for breaks on the royalties they would have to pay on new wells drilled after the cleanup.

The government says it wants to know from consultations whether “royalty credits should be provided dollar-for-dollar for site closure costs.”

All work that would earn credits would need to be completed within the three years of the pilot.

Companies are not eligible for the credits if they owe taxes to municipalities, First Nations or Métis settlements, owe money to the province or the Alberta Energy Regulator, or owe land rent payments to landowners.

The government says companies must also be in compliance with the regulator’s liability framework — its guiding document on how to manage old energy infrastructure — but it’s unclear whether that applies across all of a company’s holdings or only relates to the individual sites in question.

In order to receive the credits, companies must conduct an environmental site assessment, signed off on by a reclamation professional, on the land in order to prove the cleanup work was completed.

What is the Alberta government saying in defence of the subsidized oil well cleanup program?

The government wants input on whether the credits expire and, if so, how long they are valid. It also wants to hear whether stakeholders think the credits should be transferable, but does say a company could acquire inactive sites in order to clean them up and receive credits.

Smith, responding to a barrage of criticism about the program (more on that later), released a statement on Feb. 22 saying the consultations will take several months.   

Oil and gas infrastructure is spread out across Alberta, much of it inactive. The Alberta government says it is seeking to reduce the impact on landscapes and the Albertans that depend on them. 

She also said the amount companies would have to spend to earn credits would have to be above and beyond what they are currently required to spend each year, something the government initially said it would consult on.

“While final decisions have not been made, the total amount of royalty credits proposed to be used for the pilot program is likely to be up to $100 million over three years — after which time, the government would assess the effectiveness of the program and consult again before deciding how best to proceed,” she wrote.

A spokesperson for Minister of Energy Peter Guthrie did not respond to specific questions about the proposed pilot, including compliance requirements.

“The list of proposed details were accurate at the time of the engagements,” spokesperson Gabrielle Symbalisty wrote in an email to The Narwhal. “Feedback from those engagement sessions are being worked into the pilot plan proposal. That being said, the pilot is still under development and will need to go through the cabinet process after completion.”

Whose idea was it to subsidize Alberta’s oil well cleanup?

Back in 2021, Danielle Smith was working as a lobbyist — the president of the Alberta Enterprise Group, a business advocacy organization.

At that time, she wrote a letter to then-energy minister Sonya Savage outlining a proposal she called “R-Star” — the basis for the current pilot program.

Smith first proposed the idea of paying oil and gas companies to do their own cleanup back in 2021, when she was lobbying the government. Photo: Jeff McIntosh / Canadian Press

In her pitch letter to Savage, Smith said the failures of the current system leads to the accumulation of orphaned sites, land left to sit without reclamation, as well as unpaid taxes and leases.

“This has resulted in bad press and a lack of goodwill in rural Alberta, which is reducing support for the energy sector and impacting the government’s popularity,” she wrote.

Critics keep saying the program could be a $20 billion handout. Where does this number come from?

It’s all over social media and at the top of a lot of talking point memos these days.

That figure comes from Smith’s letter to Savage, where she said an analysis shows $20 billion in credits could, through a combination of new drilling and closure, generate 366,000 jobs and contribute more to royalties, taxes and GDP.

It’s a big number that has been seized by the Opposition NDP for use to fan opposition to the plan.

Aren’t companies already required to clean up their old wells?

It is a legal requirement for companies to clean up their wells. The basis of Alberta’s environmental rules and regulations is the polluter pay principle — a company that makes a mess is responsible for cleaning it up.

Alberta’s Environmental Protection and Enhancement Act specifically recognizes “the responsibility of polluters to pay for the costs of their actions,” and approval of well licences in the provinces considers the ability of a company to pay for the lifecycle maintenance of a site through to closure and reclamation.

But there are no timelines, and sometimes companies go bankrupt, leaving behind wells with no owner. The regulator also does not collect enough money to cover cleanup costs if a company orphans a site.

 

Orphaned oil and gas wells have no legal owner and can pose safety risks and concerns for landowners. Photo: Theresa Tayler / The Narwhal

There are, however, minimum amounts a company must spend each year on closure work. In 2023 it is $700 million industry-wide, and projected to be $764 million in 2024. Individual rates depend on the financial health of the company.

The regulator recently brought in a new liability framework intended to better assess the long-term financial health of companies prior to approving new licences.

It said in 2021 that the changes were necessary because “even during times of prosperity, the amount of closure work has often lagged behind” and it was “clear that how we manage liability has not slowed the growth of inactive sites.”

It also recently wrapped up a five-year Inactive Well Compliance Program meant to ensure those wells are in line with regulations. A spokesperson for the regulator told The Narwhal that program resulted in 27,352 out of 30,834 non-compliant inactive wells being brought into compliance, meaning they are no longer breaching rules laid out to ensure the safety of wells left sitting, unused, on the landscape.

The industry-funded Orphan Well Association should, in theory, have enough money to cover the costs for cleaning up wells left behind by bankrupt companies, but it does not.
How big is the oil well cleanup problem in Alberta?

In short, it is big.

There are approximately 460,000 wells in the province, according to the Alberta government. Of those, there are currently 75,786 oil and gas wells sitting inactive — these are wells still owned by a solvent company but not producing oil or gas.

Data on inactive wells in the province on Feb. 22, 2023, shows 19,713 wells — 26 per cent of all inactive oil and gas wells — are non-compliant with regulations at this time.

There are over 7,000 orphan sites in the province — an inactive well without a solvent owner to pay for cleanup. Approximately 170,000 wells are abandoned — capped and put out of service — but which have not been reclaimed.

Who’s paying for Alberta’s oil well cleanup now?

Officially, oil and gas companies are required to pay the full costs of cleaning up wells and the sites they are drilled on. But that has not always been the case.

Sometimes companies simply close their doors and desert the wells, leaving them as orphans.

“What we’ve learned, and what Albertans have learned, is that the cheapest way to get out of reclamation is going bankrupt,” Paul McLauchlin, president of the Rural Municipalities of Alberta, told the Canadian Press in January.

Orphan wells, once officially declared so by the regulator, fall under the purview of the Orphan Well Association. That association received $335 million in loans from the province between 2017 and 2020 in order to deal with a significant backlog.

The federal government also loaned the association $200 million in 2020, following a previous injection of $30 million in 2017.

Even if a well never becomes an orphan, companies have also already received aid to clean up their wells and facilities. The federal government handed $1 billion to Alberta for cleanup grants in 2020: the bulk went to one municipality and just three companies, two of which were oil giants CNRL and Cenovus.

The regulator said it could not say whether that funding helped reduce the overall liability burden in the province because it did not have access to the government’s data.

Estimates for the total cost of cleaning up Alberta’s oil and gas liabilities range from $58 billion to as high as $260 billion.

 
Who stands to benefit from this program?

The government argues this is a win-win-win. Companies get financial incentive to clean up old sites and drill new ones. The government gets an infusion of cash from job creation and new royalties and taxes. Albertans finally get some of their land cleaned up.

But it’s clear the beneficiaries will be oil and gas companies with a significant stockpile of old wells that need cleaning up. 

Despite facing financial difficulties in recent years, Alberta’s major oil and gas producers are now raking in huge profits. These companies may stand to benefit from Smith’s program. 

Smith’s letter to Savage in 2021 was focused on the benefit of the program to junior oil and gas companies, smaller operations which are sometimes drowning in liabilities, but the majors will certainly benefit too.

An analysis by Scotiabank as part of a research note available to subscribers, says it expects the biggest winner of the program would be CNRL, the largest oil producer in the country, followed by Cenovus and Paramount Resources.

But that doesn’t mean only major oil companies are set to benefit. Of the companies with the highest number of eligible wells in their inventory, the majority are junior companies, according to the analysis.
Aren’t oil companies swimming in cash?

Smith’s pitch to Savage came at a time when the pandemic and a price crash were taking chunks out of the oil and gas industry and she warned the situation had “become dark for the junior oil and gas sector.”

That is not the story today.

Companies have seen profits surge over the past year, hitting record highs for many companies.

 

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s program could see Albertans paying companies to clean up oil and gas wells they’re legally responsible for, regardless of their profits. Cenovus, which operates facilities like these across the province, stands to benefit from Smith’s program. The company brought in $6.5 billion in net earnings last year. Photo: Cenovus

Of the top three companies Scotiabank says could benefit the most from this program, Cenovus raked in $6.5 billion, up from $587 million in 2021. Canadian Natural has not reported its year-end numbers, but gobbled up $2.8 billion in net revenue in the third quarter of the year alone. Paramount has also not reported its year-end results, but had a net income of $222 million in the third quarter. In 2021, it earned $237 million throughout the entire year.

What are critics saying?

The government has faced significant backlash for the proposal, and not just from environmentalists or the Opposition.

Scotiabank’s research note, which included the analysis, said the program would benefit some producers, but has the potential to “generate negative sentiment toward the sector.” It said the program went against “the core capitalist principle that private companies should take full responsibility for the liabilities they willingly accept.”

Even Savage, now the minister of environment, rejected the plan when she was lobbied by Smith in 2021. She said the program did not align with the polluter pay principle or the province’s royalty regime, according to the Canadian Press.

She has avoided commenting on the government’s pilot proposal in recent days.

Critics like University of Alberta economist Andrew Leach are concerned Smith’s program is a “wealth transfer” from Albertan taxpayers to industry. 

Others, including the NDP, have raised concerns about whether Smith’s connections to companies through her previous lobbying could be influencing her decision to pursue what many see as a giveaway. The party has tried to connect the scheme to the fact Smith has not declared the donors to her leadership campaign in the spring.

University of Alberta economist Andrew Leach, writing for CBC, called the program “a free lunch.”

“Or, more properly, a lunch paid for by Albertans,” he wrote. “It’s a wealth transfer to the oil and gas industry. Instead of ensuring the polluter pays, R-Star would have us paying the polluter.”

He also argued the program would provide the most reward when prices are high and the least when they are low, the opposite of what should happen to incentivize companies to clean up a mess spread across the province.

Photos: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

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