cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/42980
The orphan wells trace back to a tangled web of foreign investors, a company based in the British Virgin Islands and a last-ditch effort to sell to a Chinese company for $22M
From The Narwhal via This RSS Feed.
It is too late to get money from these companies if they fold, especially since they are practically created to fold as soon as the aren’t getting the expected return on investment.
Prepaying is the only way to make sure they are responsible. If it leads to them not starting as many wells then they are only proving that they weren’t planning on cleaning up afterwards to begin with.
Just so long as they aren’t pre-paying with IOU’s. There is lots of cases with pension funds having a bunch of company bonds or other debt instruments that become worthless when the company folds (Nortel comes to mind).
Canadian dollars only. In a trust or financial device that pays out to the government not the company. Non refundable but transferrable if you don’t end up drilling that well then it can move to another proposed well.
In case they think of asking for the money back if they clean up themselves, it still needs a third party inspection after a 5 year period to insure the clean up wasn’t half assed before payout of initial deposit. All interest goes to environmental protection agencies.