“We were already planning to have a very busy 2020, and this is going to help us continue doing the work that we’re doing,” said Lars De Pauw, executive director of the Orphan Well Association.

The funding is part of Ottawa’s effort to help Alberta’s battered energy sector, and about $1 billion of the money will go to oilfield service companies for well site cleanup. (They can get grants of up to $30,000 per site, covering 25 to 100 per cent of the cost.)

As well, the Orphan Well Association gets a loan of $200 million on top of an earlier provincial loan of $100 million.

“Most of the money we get outside of the loans comes from the oil and gas industry, so this money is really going to offset some of that money we were going to be getting from other sources and allow (oil and gas) producers more time to repay that money,” said De Pauw.

Last year, the association cleaned up about 1,000 decommissioned wells and is on target to double that for this upcoming year. But the funding is more likely to be needed in future years, as record-low oil prices force even more oil and gas companies to shutter their operations.

“We’re going to get more sites. We know that,” he said, adding the association is “pretty much at capacity” for reclaiming well sites this year.

“So the money that we need is not necessarily for this year. We’re well funded for this year. It’s more about 2021 and 2022.”

But one landowner advocate thinks the money should be going to support the Orphan Well Association directly — not oil and gas companies.

“The Orphan Well Association does a good job — it just doesn’t have enough money to take care of all the companies,” said Daryl Bennett, director of the Action Surface Rights Association. “We have tens of thousands of wells out there that need to be cleaned up. So we need the Orphan Well Association, and it needs to be funded.”

The reclamation was supposed to be financed by oil and gas companies, but “the system didn’t require them to put the money aside, and now a lot of them are going bankrupt,” said Bennett, adding it wouldn’t be “prudent” to give these struggling companies more money.

“We’ve learned we can’t trust a lot of these companies — they’ve learned to game the system,” he said.

“They’re not paying property taxes now, they’re not paying landowner rentals, and now it appears they’re not going to have to clean up their mess. You don’t want to give all these executives who are about to have bankrupt companies golden handshakes as they leave. You want to ensure that this money actually goes to reclamation.”

Solar energy transition

But Bennett said he’s happy the wells will finally be getting needed attention and funding.

“They need to be cleaned up. And if the industry won’t, then the taxpayer has to. Somebody has to clean up the mess. We can’t just leave it sit.”

But one group hopes some of the sites will be left to sit just a little while longer.

RenuWell, in partnership with the Municipal District of Taber, has been working on a pilot pro­ject to convert orphan well sites to renewable solar energy generation. But the window to do that will grow narrower and narrower as more of these sites are reclaimed.

“All these things are speeding up the closure of abandoned infrastructure on landowners’ agricultural land, and I’m very much in favour of land being given back to the farmers,” said project lead Keith Hirsche.

“But there are many sites that are poor-quality agricultural land. These sites would be suitable for renewable energy generation, but things are being accelerated so fast with this job creation program that a lot of the infrastructure that could be reused for solar generation is going to get cleaned up before we have a chance to work with it.”

These sites — about 10 per cent of the leases in the province — are ideal for solar power generation because they already have roads and power lines. But as they are reclaimed, that infrastructure will likely be removed — a costly undertaking not needed if the site is used for solar power generation.

“You’ve already got a road. You’ve already got power lines. You just repurpose it for a different type of energy. It’s a win win for everybody,” said Bennett, who’s also involved in the pilot project.

Conversion to solar offers more than short-term employment, said Hirsche.

“Once those sites are cleaned up, that employment is gone,” he said. “But what we see from this is we get ongoing job creation and ongoing tax revenue for the municipalities, and the money that’s saved by not having to take the roads and power lines out from these sites could instead be used to close off more sites that have better value for the farms.”

‘Up-skilling’ for energy workers

And oil and gas workers are ideally suited to this type of work, said Lliam Hildebrand, founder of Iron and Earth, an organization that ‘up-skills’ experienced workers in solar panel installation.

“Alberta has an incredible inventory of skills and infrastructure that can be leveraged for building new energy economies,” said Hildebrand. “We basically want to help oil and gas workers get back to work by utilizing abandoned or inactive wells for solar energy projects.”

So far, Iron and Earth has conducted three training programs in partnership with others, with plans to launch its own in-house training program this fall, depending on the pandemic.

“We’re not talking about retraining. We’re talking about up-skilling,” he said of the five-day program.

“It’s a huge benefit to workers to know that they now have skills that are relevant to these new and emerging technologies and they can be confident moving forward with their careers.

“It’s also a huge benefit for the economy because, if we can put people through a five-day program and they’re still going to be utilizing their core skills, that’s going to be a lot less burden on the taxpayers.”

Investing public dollars in renewable energy generation could also create a “win win win” for the economy post-pandemic, he added.

“What our economy is going to need right now is as many shovel-ready projects as possible,” said Hildebrand. “There are huge opportunities here, and we want to be a part of that.”

But that will require a shift in thinking from the oil and gas industry and the provincial government.

When asked at the press conference announcing the new provincial program whether Alberta could see a faster transition to renewable energy sources, Premier Jason Kenney shut that down quickly.

“When you talk about the Green New Deal, listen, our focus is on getting people back to work in Alberta — not pie-in-the-sky ideological schemes,” said Kenney. “We are actually not trying to amplify, but fight back against the political agenda of the green left that has been trying to landlock Alberta energy.”

However, in Europe, “oil and gas and renewables have started to work hand in hand,” said Hirsche.

“These companies have basically seen that there’s going to be a transition in the energy world, so rather than fighting it, these large oil and gas companies are looking at how they can have a future for themselves, by being an energy company that does both hydrocarbons and also renewable energy,” he said.

“Unfortunately, the political rhetoric in Alberta has really hardened around this idea of oil and gas against renewables. This kind of rhetoric has really damaged the ability to work together in the province.

“There just needs to be an open discussion about where we want to go as a province and how we’re going to get there. But that gets in the way of talking points about how Ottawa is picking on us.”

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Last year, an electric utility was trying to collect payment from farmers for electricity supplied to an insolvent oil and gas company. Some landowners brought the issue to the attention of the Farmers’ Advocate Office (FAO), which issued a warning and pursued the matter with the utilities’ commission.

• Read more: Don’t be fooled by false promises
• Read more: Some landowners wrongly billed for power

The FAO says landowners should check past electricity bills and contact it or the utilities’ commission if they were billed for electrification of an oil and gas lease.

The post Landowners not on the hook for insolvent gas or oil companies appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

“One of the frustrations we’ve been hearing from landowners is that some have been given the impression that the company will come back and ‘top off’ compensation if another landowner along the same route negotiates at a higher rate,” said FAO official Jeana Schuurman. “This may just simply be a tactic used by the company to avoid delays in securing the agreements.”

There is no legal obligation to “top off” compensation and “each contract is valid from the day it is signed,” she said.

For more info, call 310-FARM or email farmers.advocate@gov.ab.ca.

The post Don’t be fooled by false promises appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

“There is currently no central repository where this type of information is compiled and accessible to landowners,” said Jeana Les, research and communications specialist for the FAO.

“When negotiating with energy companies, landowners want to know if the compensation offer made by the land agent is within the range offered to other landowners,” says Les. “The Pricing Transparency Maps will provide a starting point for rural landowners who are negotiating with energy companies.”

Landowners were positive about the compensation maps the FAO produced from 2007-09, said Les. The four new online maps, to be released this fall, will be more robust and interactive, and include a greater number of details and better sorting functions. They will be updated on a continuous basis.

The FAO is currently accepting seismic and pipeline right-of-way agreements no older than 2011, and surface lease and transmission agreements no older than 2010. Originals should not be submitted, as they will not be returned, and no agreements containing a privacy clause will be accepted.

Participants will be required to sign a release pursuant to the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. Names and contact information will not be released through the maps, but the legal land description will be included.

For more information, contact Les at jeana.les@gov.ab.ca or call 310-FARM (3276).

The post Province preparing surface rights maps appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

“We’re estimating somewhere in the range of $12 billion less investment taking place,” said Michael Burt, director of industrial economic trends with the Conference Board of Canada.

“That’s going to translate into thousands of fewer jobs in the oilpatch and also in the construction industry associated with developing oilsands pipelines.”

“We are expecting some job losses in the energy sector and I think that translates into some nice, juicy resumés coming through the door of forest and ag producers,” added Todd Hirsch, senior economist with ATB Financial.

“That’s a benefit — and people will not have to back up the money truck to get them.”

Farm employers across the country have struggled to find workers, and the fact that there are “close to 50,000” temporary foreign workers working in Canadian agriculture is evidence of that, said Burt.

But the big problem in Alberta has been competition for workers, such as truck drivers, that are in demand in both agriculture and the energy sector, he said.

“They may find it easier to get a job in oil and gas, or they may get higher pay,” said Burt. “So you’ve seen people in particular occupations being drawn out of agriculture, and likely other sectors as well, into oil and gas when the boom was occurring the last few years.”

Agriculture has also had trouble attracting unskilled labourers who have been drawn by the high pay and high demand for workers in the energy business.

But that was then — the landscape is dramatically different now, said Burt.

“Basically, those people who were working in the oilsands or the oil and gas sector will be looking for jobs elsewhere. Agriculture and other sectors will likely benefit from that.”

Attracting workers

So how can producers grab hold of some of these workers?

Use some of the same tricks that oil and gas companies do, suggests Cheryl Knight, an oil and gas human resources consultant based in Calgary.

Knight promotes a “multi-pronged approach” that embraces flexibility.

“The worker today is demanding much more flexibility,” said Knight, who spoke at the Agricultural Labour Summit in Red Deer late last year.

“We can complain about it. We can fight it. We can try to change it. But the best thing to do is to figure out ways to address it.”

The oil and gas industry has been built on a “mobile workforce” — skilled workers from other provinces who are offered customized work rotations, said Knight. And producers can attract farm workers using a similar system.

“You can target areas of high unemployment across Canada where there are skilled people who are unemployed,” she said.

“What opportunities do you have to address some of your labour supply (problems) through mobile workers and rotations?”

Untapped labour pools

Producers should also be looking at “underrepresented supply pools,” as the oil and gas industry has done.

Youth are the easiest to attract — if employers make it easy for them.

“Youth do not know how to find you — they’re a little bit lazy in terms of how to find the sector and how to get into the sector,” said Knight, who suggests working with high schools and colleges to utilize or develop work-placement programs.

Immigrants are another labour supply pool that producers should consider.

“There are immigrants in Canada who are unemployed and underemployed,” said Knight. “They are the most motivated, skilled, educated, and flexible workforce that we have in Canada.”

And while Aboriginal workers can be difficult to attract, they also represent a largely untapped labour pool that producers should explore, she added.

“As we’ve found in oil and gas, partnerships with Aboriginal communities are critical,” she said. “It’s probably the most long-term prospect that we have, and it’s one of the prongs that we must work on.”

But producers also need to be willing and able to invest in training and development if they hope to attract and retain farm workers, regardless of whether these workers came from the oilpatch.

“You’re going to have to train those people who have transferrable skills, but not 100 per cent of the skills that you need,” said Knight.

“There’s no magic wand. There are low-hanging fruit… but you have to be working at things all the way through.”

The post Oilpatch’s pain could be agriculture’s gain as layoffs mount appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.