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Seizing opportunities
Alberta First Nations participating in abandoned well cleanup, sands development
Gary Park for Petroleum News
The growing pace of Indigenous equity stakes in energy projects is quickening in Western Canada, with one First Nation in Alberta gearing up to develop an oil sands project and another confident it can gain an ownership stake in the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.
In addition, two Indigenous-owned service companies have been named to lead a cleanup effort at abandoned oil and natural gas well sites in Alberta - one on Enoch Cree Nation land near Edmonton and another working at “orphan well” sites across Alberta.
Meanwhile, after 20 years of sitting on an oil sands lease, the Fort McKay First Nation in northeastern Alberta has decided the timing is now ripe to develop its land, confident there will be a continuing global appetite for crude and that market conditions will improve over the years.
Fort McKay Chief Mel Grandjamb said the world-wide shift to renewable energy sources puts pressure on his community to take advantage of its lease while it can.
Alvaro Pinto, the nation’s newly appointed chief executive of oil sands development and sustainability, will develop the next phases of the Moose Lake oil sands project to enlarge Fort McKay’s existing eight mines and three in-situ operations, which benefit the community’s 12 companies that service the oil industry, employ more than 1,400 people and have generated up to C$500 million in annual revenue
Pinto declined to estimate how much crude Moose Lake reserves could yield beyond saying his community aims to be a leader in resource development, while balancing that “in a better environmental way than is being done today.”
He hopes to deliver a firm proposal by the end of this year to the Fort McKay chief and council, laying out information on what assessments are needed for the project to proceed.
Trans Mountain project In line with indications from the Canadian government, Treaty Six First Nations Grand Chief Billy Morin said he expects an early announcement from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on an ownership position for Indigenous communities in the Trans Mountain project, TMX.
Two years ago, at a groundbreaking ceremony for TMX, the Enoch Cree Nation announced a C$6 million investment to develop equipment stockpile sites for the pipeline.
“We are proud of the relationship we have built with Trans Mountain,” Morin said, adding it laid the groundwork for “eventual aboriginal ownership of the pipeline.”
He made his forecast of an expanded Enoch Cree role earlier in July while attending an announcement by Alberta Premier Jason Kenney on aboriginal participation in a Site Rehabilitation Program, SRP, which includes C$1 billion commitments by both the Alberta and Canadian governments to start cleaning up and rehabilitating property at 91,000 inactive wells.
Some sites date back to 1950s Morin said remediation work on sites that were abandoned as far back as the 1950s could not happen without the program, describing the undertaking as “unprecedented collaboration” by government, First Nations and industry.
The effort will be led by Backwoods Energy Services (owned by the Alexis Nakota Sioux Nation) and Western Petroleum Management (also an Indigenous-owned company). They have gained approval to tackle 55 and 257 sites respectively under the SRP, which will release funding in increments of C$100 million.
Kenney said he is confident “we will see many more Indigenous companies and employees getting back to work and many more sites getting cleaned up across Alberta,” all stemming from his government’s creation last year of the Alberta Indigenous Opportunities Corp.
Indigenous Relations Minister Rick Wilson said the aboriginal participation in energy projects is “a game changer for Indigenous businesses and communities” whose response to the program has been “overwhelmingly positive” which could result in the establishment of “economic powerhouses.”
Alberta Energy Minister Sonya Savage said C$69 million in contracts has so far been distributed among 140 companies through the SRP which is expected to create 5,300 jobs.
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