Trident Exploration’s final press release about its sudden and unexpected dissolution on April 30 certainly paints a sympathetic picture of a small corporation’s downfall.
To hear them tell it, the natural gas company’s untimely end was due to a mixture of low gas prices over several years, as well as high surface lease/property tax payments.
Trident’s woes were further compounded by the Supreme Court of Canada’s ruling that energy companies had to fulfill their environmental obligations before paying back their creditors, even in the case of insolvency or bankruptcy.
Trident - or rather its board of directors, for certainly no employee was left to write this release - claims that this ruling had the consequence of “intensifying” Trident’s financial distress and accelerating unfounded abandoned well obligations.
While Trident has been working with the Alberta Energy Regulator in the prior months to hand over its assets to “responsible operators,” it had been unable to secure support for a restructuring and the board of directors decided to call it quits.
A sad, sad tale indeed. But none of this changes the fact that you, the taxpayer, have been left holding a very hefty bag.
According to that same release, Trident apparently operated 4,700 wells across Alberta, including an undetermined number in the Fort Assiniboine area. The potential environmental implications of so many natural gas wells sitting unattended and unreclaimed is frightening.
What’s more, their inability to pay taxes leaves municipalities across Alberta in the lurch. Woodlands County is reluctant to say how much Trident was left owing, but we have determined it to be in the neighbourhood of $1 million in outstanding taxes. (Astoundingly, Trident is apparently not Woodlands’ biggest debtor, as there is apparently one other company that owes even more.)
Who will oversee these wells? Who will pay these taxes? Trident offers no answers; they’ve simply walked away from the table, leaving us to face the consequences.
Fortunately for us, a non-profit organization has stepped in to shoulder some of the burden. The Orphan Well Association (OWA) has taken the “unprecedented” step of appointing a receiver to look after Trident’s assets until they can be transferred/sold off. That receiver, PWC, has already been appointed through a court order.
It is a sad state of affairs that we must rely on a non-profit to minimize the financial and environmental fallout from an oil and gas company’s sudden dissolution.
Certainly one can feel sorry for Trident’s terminated employees and contractors, as well as the investors they’ve left out of pocket.
But never forget that the company as a whole left us to clean up their mess.
