By Tony Bruder
For three generations, my family has lived on our ranch near Twin Butte, Alberta, where the mountains meet the prairies. Against a backdrop of towering rock there is an abundance of wildlife, and immensely rich grazing land. In the midst of all this beauty lies an all too familiar site in rural Alberta — two long-inactive sour gas wells.
I never met my grandfather, but my dad told me about the first time oil and gas folks stepped foot on our property near Twin Butte 60 years ago — the way they disregarded my grandfather’s concerns about the land (Read more…) the haphazard way in which they commenced drilling, operated their wells and eventually left the site as an eyesore on the land.
What we didn’t expect is that our own government — in this case the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) — would side with industry over the people it is meant to protect.