Article content

Albertans may have grown accustomed to reading about our crisis of unfunded oilfield cleanup. But missing from the debate over scale and blame is an appreciation of just how urgent it is Alberta solve this problem.

When the province’s top official and his team of Alberta Energy Regulator experts sketch out their estimate of outstanding reclamation obligations for the energy sector and cautions their quarter-trillion-dollar estimate is likely too small, I think we should take them seriously.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Opinion: Alberta stumbling in the dark in sunset of conventional oil and gas Back to video

But that’s just me. Industry, government and regulators prefer to keep their heads in the sand to the extent they can.

Leaving aside the debate about whether this crisis involves $60 billion in unfunded cleanup (as AER claims publicly) or at least $260 billion (as AER suggests privately), the peer-reviewed research I’ve been doing for 15 years with the oil lobby’s own data demonstrates why Albertans’ hair should be on fire.