Alberta failed to collect billions in royalties from oil companies

As an ex-Edmontonian, I regret that Alberta’s government abandoned the robust royalty regime negotiated by premier Peter Lougheed in the 1970s. The Edmonton-based Parkland Institute estimates that between 1999-2008, Alberta forfeited $121 billion in excess profits to fossil fuel companies, many of them foreignowned.

Alberta’s Heritage Fund is less than two per cent of Norway’s trillion-dollar fund, derived from similar-sized oilfields. About 400,000 abandoned oil and gas wells leave behind a potential cleanup bill of $80 billion. And no provincial sales tax? Even two per cent would equal the pipeline revenues Premier Rachel Notley optimistically anticipates.

Such revenues, along with current and potential federal handouts to “big oil” could instead finance Alberta’s economic diversification, a national strategic oil reserve, and refinery and renewable energy jobs, as Alberta unions have proposed.

Lougheed warned the bitumen sands were developing too rapidly, outstripping infrastructure, pushing up inflation, and overinvesting in a boom-bust economy that hurts many people during a downturn.

Rather than vilifying B.C.’s government for regulating serious environmental risks, let’s build a climate-friendly sustainable modern economy for all Canadians.

Bob Hackett, Burnaby