Clean up your MAS is a campaign to stop the Alberta government from making taxpayers pay for oil and gas cleanup costs.

Across Alberta there are more than 320 thousand oil and gas wells, 450 thousand kilometres of pipeline, and 38 thousand oil and gas facilities. As this infrastructure ages and breaks down, it leaks harmful toxins into the surrounding environment and nearby communities. All of this infrastructure eventually needs to be cleaned up, and that cleanup needs to be paid for.

Estimated cleanup costs range from at least $60 billion to more than $130 billion. In Alberta and across Canada, the Polluter Pays Principle is the law. Polluters are supposed to pay for the costs of their actions — especially if they’ve profited off that pollution. But right now the government of Alberta has collected less than one percent of the money needed for cleanup — and that’s using the lower $60 billion estimate.

The oil and gas industry has more than enough money to pay for cleanup. In the last four years alone (from 2021 to 2024), companies across Alberta’s oil and gas industry posted combined profits of $150 billion. And according to the Centre for Future Work, surging oil prices were the largest driver of early-pandemic inflation — with record oil profits coming at the expense of Canadian households. But instead of making polluters pay for cleanup, the Alberta government is planning to make taxpayers foot the bill.

This new “drill & dash” scheme, known as the Mature Asset Strategy (or MAS), was pushed by a longtime oilpatch insider — David Yager — who currently serves as the special advisor to premier Danielle Smith, and sits on the Board of Directors at the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER). He’s supposed to help regulate the industry, but instead he’s crafted a plan to help companies dodge their commitments to Albertans.

The strategy includes 21 recommendations to “manage maturing oil and gas assets in Alberta” — but it’s essentially an industry wish list. These recommendations, if made into law, would shift the burden of cleanup onto taxpayers, weaken reclamation standards, and violate the Polluter Pays Principle. One proposal is to create new “special purpose entities” — called HarvestCo and ClosureCo — which would be used to buy junk wells from companies using taxpayer money.

We expect the government of Alberta to try to legislate the MAS recommendations at the end of October or early November. These recommendations won’t fix the cleanup problem, but they would give polluting companies one last payday at our expense, and allow industry to walk away from its mess.

Schools, hospitals, disability benefits, and other public services are consistently underfunded. Yet, somehow the provincial government has billions to bail out delinquent companies and their wealthy CEOs. Public money should fund healthcare, education, or a just transition, not line the pockets of oil and gas executives who are profiting off of the climate crisis and the rising cost of living.

Our Goal

This campaign is an opportunity to mount a collective effort to protect all Albertans, our tax dollars, and the land we depend on. Failure here risks emboldening this government to make further changes that will negatively impact our loved ones, our communities, and our future.

Our goal is to build the organized mass movement needed to ensure that:

1. The Government of Alberta does not implement any of the recommendations from the Mature Asset Strategy, and

2. The Government of Alberta upholds the Polluter Pays Principle and enforces the existing obligation for oil and gas companies to pay for the costs of cleanup.

Sign Our Petition

Do you think the government of Alberta should scrap the Mature Asset Strategy and ensure oil and gas companies pay for cleanup?