NATHAN VANDERKLIPPE, Globe and Mail, Jan. 28, 2011
The Alberta government is working to create a single body to regulate oil and gas development for the province, a major shift that promises to speed approval of new wells and oil sands projects by months.
A “regulatory enhancement task force” has recommended one of the largest overhauls in the history of Alberta’s energy enforcement system, in a bid to pare down complexity and duplication of a process derided by industry as too slow.
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“These actions will ensure the regulatory system supports the development of Alberta’s oil and gas resources,” said Diana McQueen, parliamentary assistant for energy who chaired a task force that wrote a report recommending the changes.
The changes were immediately heralded by industry as a major step forward.
By having a single regulator, “I would say we’re talking months, not weeks, in terms of cost and time savings,” said Dave Collyer, president of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. He called the move “very helpful.”
Officials immediately moved to quell fears that they would not be able to enact the change at a time of substantial political uncertainty, in the wake of Premier Ed Stelmach’s decision to step down. The government has accepted the recommendations and intends to table them for legislative approval within two months.
“I want to be very clear on this: Improving the regulatory system in no way means we are watering it down,” Ms. McQueen said Friday.
But critics pointed out that the recommendations flowed from intensive industry consultation, with the province hiring a former oil executive as an adviser but having extensive consultations with environmental representatives.
“I think it is clear that this was a very flawed process,” said Simon Dyer, policy director with the Pembina Institute. Others said the recommendations appear to open a system that allows extraction-friendly policies to outweigh environmental concerns. They also seem designed to reduce the ability of outside groups to have input on individual development applications, critics said.
The new regulatory body will take the functions of the province’s current Energy Resources Conservation Board and expand them to include oil and gas land sales, the review of environmental impact assessments for new energy projects and the licensing of water use.
Those duties currently reside with the environment and sustainable resource development ministries.
The task force has also recommended setting timelines on project approval decisions and creating a policy management office to fend off overlap in government policy. It also called for measures to clarify how the public can provide input on new projects, how risk is assessed, how performance is measured and how landowner disputes are resolved.
Government officials, however, said actual policies – such as how much water can be allocated to industry – have not been affected; only the process of enforcing those policies will be changed.
But the changes have already raised questions of whether moving to a single regulator will remove important checks and balances in the current system.
“Alberta has been criticized for its lack of environmental oversight, and yet we’re not actually seeing progress on that,” Mr. Dyer said. “Instead, we’re seeing discussion of increasing streamlining, which seems a misplaced focus at this point.”
