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CALGARY – The Alberta government has been keeping a tab of the clean-up costs bankrupt oil companies have handed over to the Orphan Well Association since a controversial court decision last year made it easier for companies to dump liabilities.

That tab has now passed $100 million.

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The Financial Post has obtained a copy of the Alberta Energy Regulator’s list of assets that have been transferred to the OWA, which cleans up oil and gas sites whose owners have gone bankrupt, since a controversial May 2016 Court of Queen’s Bench decision that the Supreme Court of Canada has now said it would review.

The lower-court decision allowed the trustee for Redwater Energy to send the company’s uneconomic oil and gas wells to the OWA but keep control of better-performing wells, which could be sold to repay the company’s debt. The decision prioritized the rights of debt holders over environmental remediation in insolvency processes.