GrainsWest Winter 2021

Winter 2021 grainswest.com 23 Chris Allam Farms wheat, canola, faba beans, oats, barley and hemp near Edmonton and in Thorhild County Well site operators, industry and government need to put more thought into proper land use, according to Chris Allam. There is a handful of oil and gas wells located on his property, one of which is an orphan and another whose operator is nearly bankrupt and has stopped lease payments. The orphan well has not yet been decommissioned, said Allam. Crosby Cook Drilling completions engineer, farms cattle, hay and grain in the Cremona and Sundre areas It’s been 10 years since Bonavista decommissioned and reclaimed its well site on the Cook family farm, and Crosby Cook said he would not hesitate to consider allowing a new site to be drilled. Though Cook belongs to a farm family, his primary job includes approaching landowners with well site drilling proposals. There are risks to both the farmer and the oil well operator, he said. “The landowner compensation is adequate in the structure that we have right now,” he said. He also believes wells drilled today are better designed and better made than in the past. “The long-term impact and the longer- term cleanup costs are significantly less than those older [wells],” he said. His real concern was the hazards posed by the province’s older sites. “We still have lots to clean up. It’s an old industry,” he said. Cook is unsure how the current regulatory system for the oil and gas industry can be improved, considering the cyclical nature of the sector. “I don’t know how you build a formula that would accommodate the lows and highs but still “They get put where the oil company wants to put them,” he said. Oil well operators should drill the sites near fence lines and on abandoned lots, not in the middle of farm fields, he believes. “It’s a pain in the neck.” Alberta farmers will see a whole new set of issues with solar farms and windfarms, he added. “It’s not just an oil and gas problem, it’s farmland getting used for things it’s not meant to be used for,” he said. Such operations should be relegated to poorer fields, not prime farmland, he said. Allam recommends that any farmer considering allowing a new well site on their property take the time to address their needs and concerns with the operator. This might include, for example, asking them to prevent the creation of sloughs. “You know, clubroot’s getting to be a big problem,” he said, and added that farmers can make sure the well site operators’ vehicles stay on their right of way and do not drive through cropped fields. “They’re going to do what’s easiest for them,” he said. However, if the farmer sits down and outlines the concerns they want addressed, “they’re usually willing to work with you.” allow the industry to move forward with capital projects.” Everyone is quick to reap the rewards of oil and gas leases and the spinoff jobs they create, but quickly forgets the good times those leases funded when the payments stop, Crosby said. “It comes down to, it’s a provincial resource. I think the bottom line is the province is responsible for the long-term effects of this.” When asked how farmers and landowners could have confidence in new well sites if current sites were being left for the province to clean up with taxpayer money, Cook said he didn’t have an answer. Joe Ripley Farms wheat, barley, canola, hay and cattle near Lethbridge Joe Ripley and his family took matters into their own hands when a gas well on rented farm land went inactive for years. Its access road crossed their property, and they got a little money from the well operator for that access. In 2004, the payments stopped, and they were left with a useless road across their land. “And nobody could track them down,” he said of the well site operator. Ripley estimated he and his family put in $1,000 worth of labour to take the access road out. Luckily, he owned an excavator he could use to complete the task. Meanwhile, the well site itself was a nuisance on the rented land. “It was quite overgrown and quite an eyesore,” said Ripley. “It just got to the point where nobody else was going to fix it.” In early October, contractors hired by the province’s new Site Rehabilitation Program assessed the property and said they could decommission and reclaim the site. They dug below ground and capped the well, Ripley said. They told Ripley that there was the real risk the well would otherwise rust out and start leaking gas. “We’d given up that anybody was going to care about this old abandoned well,” he said. “I always thought that people should have to put aside money for remediation. What happened to this remediation money? Because obviously we didn’t see any of it, and the government didn’t either.”