Alberta’s Oilsands Owe Canadians Far More than They Can Pay | The Tyee
For reasons to be pondered by indebted generations yet unborn, the beleaguered Alberta Energy Regulator allowed the petroleum sector to pile up massive unfunded environmental liabilities on the dubious assumption that bitumen extraction would remain profitable for decades into the future. So towering is the tally of unreclaimed tailings ponds that it is possible the largest part of Alberta’s energy sector — heavily hyped as the economic engine of the nation — never actually made any money.
Bitumen royalties paid to the Alberta government back to 1970 total $49 billion. Corrected for inflation, this figure is closer to $59 billion. This sounds like a hefty sum, except when compared to unfunded cleanup costs. Officially the AER estimates total oil and gas liabilities to be $58 billion with only $1.6 billion held in securities. Leaked documents from the AER instead peg potential cleanup costs of the tailing ponds alone to closer to $130 billion.