Alberta Won’t Recover $250M in Property Taxes from Deadbeat Fossils, Minister Admits
March 18, 2026
Reading time: 3 minutes
Author: Compiled by The Energy Mix staff
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The Alberta government is admitting that it won’t likely recover $250 million in property taxes that oil and gas companies owe rural municipalities, even though it hopes to get the problem under control in future.
A report issued Monday by the province, Rural Municipalities Alberta (RMA), and the Property Tax Accountability Strategy Working Group [pdf] laid out 17 recommendations to prevent future instances of deadbeat fossils failing to pay their taxes,. “They range from making property tax payment a condition of holding or maintaining an Alberta Energy Regulator licence to making property tax payment a key measure of industry and regulatory performance,” CBC reports.
The report concluded that 96% of oil and gas companies do pay their taxes. But Municipal Affairs Minister Dan Williams acknowledged it’ll be harder to collect from “companies that are winding down, companies that don’t exist anymore. and companies in bankruptcy processes will not have the capacity to pay,” the news story states.
He singled out companies “that have obligations to reclaim that land environmentally—we appreciate that a lot of that isn’t going to come forward, isn’t going to be paid back to the province or municipalities.”
“The majority of past arrears are fundamentally unrecoverable,” Williams told media. “We can’t go back and collect from companies that don’t exist anymore.”
But Energy and Minerals Minister Brian Jean said the province will be more vigilant about companies that try to keep operating after falling behind on their local taxes.
“What happens at the end of a life cycle of some of these oil fields or gas fields that are not producing the wealth that they used to produce, is that the leaders of those companies often strip off the value and find ways to pay what they prioritize to pay,” Jean said. “And what we need to do is make sure the communication is there well in advance, so that as that starts to happen, we’re able to torque up enforcement and take away their ability to continue to operate and take over that situation.”
RMA President Kara Westerlund told media the province’s rural municipalities are facing a $25-billion infrastructure deficit, and they’ve been trying to draw attention to it for years. “Every penny and every cent collected will more than likely go to infrastructure needs within our municipalities,” she said. “We’re talking roads, bridges, culverts, wastewater, and water.”
Central Alberta landowner Dwight Popovich, a member of the Coalition for Responsible Energy (C4RE), said he’s finally receiving the years of tax payments he’s owed on an orphaned well 120 kilometres east of Edmonton—but the money is coming from taxpayers, not the company.
“It shouldn’t be landowners or taxpayers having to pay anything for any of this problem that’s been created,” he said Tuesday. “This report that’s just come out is another one of those times where they’re ignoring us.”
Last week, landowner and C4RE member Mark Dorin tore up an active lease held by Calgary-based MAGA Energy and blockaded an active well site, three years after unpaid rent had begun to accumulate, the organization reports.
“Pay your damn bills, clean up your mess, and get the hell off my land,” Dorin told the company. “We are done with you.”
The Energy Mix has asked MAGA Energy for comment, and will update this story when we hear back.
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