The Mature Asset Strategy (MAS) represents the working group deliberations chaired by David Yager – an adviser to the premier and an appointed member of the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) board of directors. The stated intention is to address the financial and environmental risks of unfunded industrial (oil & gas) liabilities and restore public confidence in industry and the provincial government.

Based on the document leaked in 2025, the term ‘mature asset’ appears to lack a detailed threshold or definition, basically allowing every oil and gas asset in the province could be considered “mature.” It offers “a workable definition for a mature asset would include an oil and gas producing asset, which refers to a reservoir, field or well that has been producing for an extended period and is at a stage where production rates are declining, making it marginal or uneconomic to continue operation at present or at some point in the near future” Furthermore, the terms used in the MAS document deviate from broadly understood terms and categories of oil and gas infrastructure as they appear in related legislation.

It is assumed that the category of ‘mature asset’ would include the 100,000 decommissioned but un-reclaimed (‘orphaned’) wells in the province. Alberta currently has 274,215 wellbores that are either marginal, inactive (non-producing), or decommissioned (wellbore decommissioned, reclamation incomplete, or not yet receiving a reclamation certificate) compared to almost 54,000 producing wells and almost 105,000 wells which have been successfully reclaimed. In addition to wellbores, AER reports that industry has built 38,553 production facilities, such as batteries and separators. As of the end of 2023, 7,525 (20 per cent) had been decommissioned but not reclaimed, 15,434 (27 per cent) were inactive, and 19,582 (51 per cent) were still in operation. To transport products to market, the industry has constructed 446,091 kms pipelines. By year-end 2023, 23 per cent had been decommissioned, 16 per cent were classified as “discontinued” or non-operating, and 60 per cent remained in service.

An AER presentation in 2018 suggested that conventional liabilities are approximately $100 billion, pipeline liabilities are around $30 billion (based primarily on estimates of federally regulated pipeline liability) and an estimated $130 billion for oil sands liabilities, bringing the total to $260 billion. The Rural Municipalities Association (RMA) report about $254 million in unpaid property taxes from oil and gas companies, and that Alberta taxpayers have covered nearly $150 million in unpaid land rents since 2010, including $30 million in 2024.

A major concern of the Mature Asset Strategy is that it assumes public responsibility for liabilities and will weaken industry accountability (moral hazard) for the clean-up of oilfield sites and environmental reclamation to acceptable standards. This is particularly salient because the notion of the ‘mature asset’ fails to adequately differentiate between orphaned wells, inactive assets owned by nearly insolvent companies, and those that are owned by currently profitable companies (that have the ability to pay for decommissioning assets at the end of life). In other words, the vagueness of the MAS process conceals the origins of the closure liability crisis and would seem to reward an industry that has neglected its obligations by offering new financial benefits and relaxed regulatory requirements.

One the other hand, orphaned and inactive oil and gas assets are considered a significant source of fugitive methane emissions that must be eliminated in the near term. Abandoning a polluter-pays principle, however, acts as another subsidy to a very profitable industry and acts as a moral hazard into the future. The concern is that these two perspectives delimit the options available to government. Surely, public institutions can better enforce legislated expectations of decommissioning and restoration (without socializing the costs) and at a rate that meets our obligations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

SAGE believes that the Mature Asset Strategy should focus on eliminating fugitive emissions of methane in its commitment to meeting greenhouse gas emission targets related to the climate crisis.

For this to be affordable, all new wells should include the up-front payment for decommissioning and restoration costs and, for existing infrastructure, greater restrictions of dumping end-of-life assets onto near-insolvent companies.

What can you do? Demand that the Government of Alberta act in the public interest by protecting against socializing liabilities from a highly profitable industry.