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For the past five years, regular as clockwork, an oil and gas company’s cheque for $4,097 has arrived in Allison Shelstad’s mailbox sometime in January, rent paid for surface access to a natural gas well on the farmland southeast of Calgary her family has owned for more than 50 years.

This year, however, the cheque didn’t come. And, when she called the company to ask why, Shelstad says she was given the runaround, a marked change from a previously co-operative relationship.

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“It’s not a ton of money but the thing that bugs me is this seems to be a widespread problem,” said Shelstad, who works for a pipeline company in Calgary and rents her farmland near Arrowwood to a cousin.

“I don’t want to have to go out and get a lawyer. But I’m thinking I might have to.”

Shelstad is not alone.

In 2015, as average benchmark oil prices fell 48 per cent, statistics being released this week show 765 landowners went to the Alberta Surface Rights Board to apply for compensation, the highest number in at least a dozen years. The board ordered the offending oil and gas producer tenants to pay $1.7 million in overdue lease payments.