Alberta Energy Regulator

Lots of these data centers aren't just a facility where the computers run, they're also associated power generation facilities, the province needs to approve that.

There's the Alberta Energy Regulator, which might be required to approve things like if there's a natural gas hookup, for example, to the data center for, you know, part of its power generation.

We know in Alberta the province is unlikely to say no.

Yeah.

Permitting-wise, like I said, we're working with Stantec to take that initial environmental sampling and water sampling and things like that.

But just to touch on the permitting part of it, being in Alberta is, is a lot different than being in BC or Ontario when it comes to permitting, um, because it's regulated by the, the Alberta Energy Regulators who do oil and gas.

And so permitting these things are standard everyday things.

You know, wells, pipelines, refineries, facilities.

While the Orphan Well Association estimates the remaining cleanup backlog at C one point sixty-six billion.

The landowners and two advocacy groups are seeking a judicial review of the Alberta Energy Regulator's responsibility to ensure that industry, rather than taxpayers, bears the cost of cleaning up abandoned wells.

The case also raises concerns about environmental, safety, and financial risks.

OYO parent Prism targets IPO launch in current fiscal.

More than 7,300 wells are currently in the association's inventory.

It's funded almost entirely through an annual industry levy set by the Alberta Energy Regulator.

Now, a group of landowners, including Dwight Popowich, is taking the regulator to court, accusing it of underfunding the system.

We're now looking at $1.6 billion to clean up everything.

And they don't think that the regulator...

Even if it's a different regulator, it's not the AER, the Alberta Energy Regulator, it's the AUC, the Alberta Utilities Commission.

They don't think they're protecting them from basically Orphan Wells 2.0. And these big public institutions say, don't worry, trust us.

And we've got this massive movement of, no, we don't trust you.

Lawyers at the environmental law charity Ecojustice are rep-representing landowners Dwight Popowich and Teresa Patry, as well as the Polluter Pay Federation and the Alberta Surface Rights Federation.

Ecojustice has filed a judicial review application in the Alberta Court of King's Bench challenging what it says is the Alberta Energy Regulator's chronic underfunding of the orphan fund levy.

The regulator deems oil and glass—gas wells orphans when an energy company becomes insolvent, defunct, or unable to meet its obligations to safely and responsibly close its sites.

Cleanup is managed through the nonprofit Orphan Well Association and is funded through an industry fee, the amount of which the AER recommends to the Alberta government every year.