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Alberta posted a big spike in the number of oil and gas wells abandoned by industry in recent months, sparking renewed calls to fix what a landowners’ group says is a broken system of cleaning up old wells.

Low commodity prices have resulted in an “unprecedented number of corporate failures,” which has ballooned the inventory of so-called orphaned wells without owners financially capable of cleaning them up, according to an industry association.

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The Orphan Well Association, the group that assumes responsibility for non-producing wells before plugging them and restoring the surface with funds from industry, had a list of 770 wells to be plugged and sealed at the end of March.

Just three months later, the tally ballooned to more than 1,100, a 45 per cent spike.

Similarly, the association had an inventory of 540 well sites in need of surface restoration, as of March 31. By the end of June, there were 744, a nearly 40 per cent jump.

“Everybody understands that the inventory is going to go up,” said Brad Herald, chairman of the Orphan Well Association, adding the group will be able to handle a big injection of wells in need of cleanup.

“We’ve been in this program for a couple of decades, and we’re not going anywhere.”