Number of #OrphanWells in Alberta will soon double as controversial #oilpatch #bankruptcy settled | CBC News https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/bakx-owa-seqouia-pwc-alberta-orphan-wells-1.7336635 “Alberta's orphan well woes are about to swell following the end of a controversial court case involving some of the biggest names in the Canadian oilpatch.

The OWA already has an inventory of about 1,600 wells in need of closure and reclamation. That workload is expected to more than double as the bankruptcy of Sequoia Resources is finally settled”

welp, we're definitely entering western North Dakota now :|

#bakken #shale #oilpatch #carbon #emissions

Originally posted on Mastodon June 7, 2024.

Sent to the National Post and Suncor ([email protected]) June 8, 2024.

(this letter is more than 200 words… but so be it)

Dear Editor,

“Not one less lemming will jump off the cliff if we don’t also jump off the cliff”, so said the millionaire chief of the Proud Order of Lemmings Society, from his office in a high tower.

“The world will not consume one less barrel of oil simply because Canada chooses not to provide it.”, said Suncor CEO Rich Kruger over video conference.

It was in response to an MP who asked, non-rhetorically, how he sleeps at night knowing his oil company and industry bears primary responsibility for the climate induced catastrophes in Canada and around the world.

“You’re actually attacking hundreds of thousands of workers”, he predictably deflected, “I don’t know how to answer that question”.

And that’s perhaps the most honest answer he could give.

Because people like him, people who run these companies and make these deflections, can only do so because they cannot – they are incapable – of conceiving of anything else.

They are so beholden to their own wealth and the illusion that they are imparting wealth onto others by extracting oil, that they cannot possibly know how to answer a question whose premise is that their unearned wealth is inherently destructive.

Their appeal for empathy for the oil worker is a ruse because an empathetic person would know the oil worker is just as vulnerable, more so in many ways, to climate catastrophe than anyone else.

The worker or other energy dependant person is not a lemming because the average person understands consequence when they see it. 

This CEO has no consequences for his actions today. He thinks he is safe in his tower but he and his temporarily powerful peers are the lemmings galloping to the cliff.

When the day comes that they near the edge, no oil worker or other person will stand in the way.

Chris Alemany

Port Alberni BC

https://chrisalemany.ca/2024/06/08/oil-ceos-wont-be-missed/

#Canada #ClimateChange #CrudeOil #Economy #emissions #Environment #FossilFuels #LetterToTheEditor #NDP #oilConsumption #oilpatch #PeakOil #Politics #Sustainability #TarSands

With satellites, fewer places to hide #MethaneEmissions

"It's the first time so-called “bottom-up” methods - which depend on ground-based measurements and estimates and is used by industry - have been combined with “top-down” methods from above.

It concluded official government and industry estimates of #methane #emissions from #Alberta's #oilpatch are 50 per cent too low."

https://edmonton.ctvnews.ca/study-finds-alberta-underestimates-methane-emissions-by-50-per-cent-1.6650693

How secrecy and regulatory capture drove Alberta’s oil and gas liability crisis.

https://theconversation.com/how-secrecy-and-regulatory-capture-drove-albertas-oil-and-gas-liability-crisis-214900

"“A hustle in the oil patch”, a “dirty legacy”: These are just a couple of the ways that the escalating costs of abandoning and reclaiming non-producing oil wells in Canada have been described.

In a new paper, we look back over 40 years and identify three factors that have led to this unprecedented regulatory failure."
#Alberta #OilPatch #Cleanup

#GlobalNews "Unpaid #oilpatch taxes rise again despite energy industry boom, say rural #Alberta municipalities

The group says energy companies now owe towns and villages in which they operate a total of $268 million. That’s up more than six per cent from last year and up 261 per cent since 2018, when the association began keeping track. As well, the rate of nonpayment is increasing."

#OILigarchy #abpoli #Alberta

https://globalnews.ca/news/9534600/rural-municipalities-alberta-oil-gas-unpaid-taxes/

#TorontoStar: "Alberta’s #oilpatch is making record billions. So why should we pay for their carbon capture plant?

So far, 2023 is shaping up as another year of booming profits for the #Alberta oilpatch and another year of industry sloth in making a start on its promised reductions of greenhouse gas emissions (#GHG)."

#OILigarchy #abpoli #ableg

https://www.thestar.com/business/opinion/2023/02/04/albertas-oilpatch-is-making-record-billions-so-why-should-we-pay-for-their-carbon-capture-plant.html

“This is work that is essential to the province and could easily have been modified to have been done safely so nobody was put at risk,” said NDP MLA Marlin Schmidt, who worked as an environmental consultant in the energy industry before he was elected.

“It didn’t make any sense in the first place and I am relieved they reversed this terrible decision.” — https://calgaryherald.com/opinion/columnists/varcoe-environmental-monitoring-in-oilpatch-to-resume-after-alarming-pause-amid-pandemic/wcm/ae2bdd58-1ad5-4077-8109-434ed36443f4/ #environment #oilpatch #monitoring #abpoli