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A de-commissioned pumpjack is shown at a well head on an oil and gas installation near Cremona, Alta. in 2016.Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press

A portion of the $1-billion fund to clean up Alberta’s inactive oil and gas wells should be solely allocated to Indigenous contractors, the Indian Resource Council says.

Stephen Buffalo, president and chief executive of the council, said he wants the province to ensure Indigenous groups get a share of the cash, which Ottawa announced in April as part of the federal response to the employment crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mr. Buffalo made the comments Wednesday at a news conference on the Enoch Cree Nation, just outside Edmonton. The provincial government event, with Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, Energy Minister Sonya Savage and Indigenous Relations Minister Rick Wilson, aimed to highlight how Indigenous companies are benefiting from the well-cleanup program.

Ms. Savage stopped short of committing a percentage of the inactive well-cleanup cash to Indigenous groups in response to Mr. Buffalo’s request, but said her government is confident they will share in a large part of the $1-billion.

Of the $69-million already allocated via the cleanup program, $6-million has been earmarked for Indigenous contractors, she said.

They include Backwoods Energy Services, an oil field service company owned by the Alexis Nakota Sioux Nation, which was approved to conduct closing work on 55 sites on Enoch Cree Nation.

Another Indigenous company, Western Petroleum Management, was approved to conduct work on 257 sites across the province.

“We’re very confident that this is going to deliver a lot of services and a lot of value for Indigenous companies,” Ms. Savage said, adding that that will be one of the measures her government will use to assess the success of the program.

Ms. Savage said an Indigenous roundtable was set up for exactly that reason, and a new site nomination process in the next rounds of the program will prioritize well rehabilitation on Indigenous land.

The province’s energy department is also working with Indigenous groups to “make sure that they have the capacity to be involved in the program,” she said.

“There are a lot of companies out there, Indigenous companies, that maybe don’t have that degree of experience” when it comes to generating operational capacity, she said, “so we’re working with them on that.”

Billy Morin, Grand Chief of the Confederacy of Treaty Six First Nations and Chief of Enoch Cree Nation, who also attended the news conference, called on Ottawa to kick in more money and resources to help clean up inactive oil and gas wells on reserve lands, saying work by successive federal governments on the reclamation file has been “negligent” for the past 60 years.

“Ultimately, they have a big role to play in getting these well sites cleaned up,” he said.

Phase 3 of the oil well-cleanup program will open Friday, with grants of up to $139,000 available for service contractors to rehabilitate inactive oil and gas sites.

The government will also open Phase 1b. It’s intended for projects that were covered in the initial round for work up to $30,000, but had applications that came in with administrative errors.

Ms. Savage said bureaucrats will re-examine applications rejected in Phase 1 to identify those that failed because of paperwork errors. Companies will not have to reapply.

Alberta is rolling out the cash despite not yet having received the promised $1-billion from the federal government.

“These things take time so we’re still waiting for the funds to be transferred over, but we’re not waiting for those funds to get people back to work,” Ms. Savage said.

The Alberta government is also set to unveil its new oil and gas well liability management framework “shortly,” she said.

She said the new rules will “ensure the right conditions exist” so that energy companies pay for the environmental cleanup of their wells once they shut down production.

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