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Across Alberta, hundreds of thousands of relics of old oil and gas activity — wells, pipelines, mines and more — are left sitting idle on the landscape. They can leach pollution, cause problems for farmers or pose health and safety risks to nearby residents. To clean them all up will cost tens of billions of dollars and take decades.
Overseeing that slow cleanup is the Alberta Energy Regulator, an industry-funded independent agency that oversees the regulation of resource development in Alberta.
The regulator has been the focus of much criticism over the years, including accusations of lax oversight and opaque data. In an attempt to improve transparency, the regulator recently made an effort to publish more public information about companies that shirk their financial responsibility for cleaning up old oil and gas infrastructure.
Last year, the Alberta Energy Regulator started publishing what is called a liability monitoring report — which outlines progress made on cleanup, but also a list of companies that have failed to make specific payments related to cleaning up old wells.
In Alberta, oil and gas companies must spend a mandatory minimum amount on shutting down and cleaning up old wells each year, as well as pay a mandatory levy to fund the Orphan Well Association, the provincial organization responsible for wells left behind by companies that have gone bankrupt.
On the surface, the report and the lists are an important step in transparency, revealing the companies the regulator says are shirking their responsibilities. But look a little closer and that transparency masks a deep and complex web of ownership and responsibility.
Who owns these companies? Who sits on their boards? Are they real companies or simply shells for other companies?
The Narwhal spent weeks building a database to answer these questions, starting with the list of companies published by the regulator over the past two years.
Then we obtained hundreds of corporate registry documents to better understand who, ultimately, owns or makes decisions for these companies.
Here’s how we built our database, why we did it and what it can tell us about who is extracting the province’s oil and gas and the rules they are supposed to obey.
Most Albertans will recognize the big names in oil and gas — names such as Canadian Natural Resources, Suncor or Shell — but few would know Topanga Resources or New North Resources. Basically no one would know the president or owner of these small companies.
The list of delinquent companies published by the regulator tells the public very little, as it does not include information on the ownership of these private companies.
To dig into the details requires time and money — $20 per corporate record search, which amounts to close to $4,000 to obtain the data.
The Narwhal ordered records for every company on the delinquency lists published in 2024 and 2025 (although the lists, confusingly, are for delinquencies in 2022 and 2023 respectively).
Those documents list directors and voting shareholders in the companies, if they exist. They also list associated companies, previous companies that were amalgamated or whether the company is simply a shareholder in another company.
Yes, it gets confusing.
We put that information into a spreadsheet to sort who actually owns the companies on the delinquency list, as well as who sits on their boards and whether they are associated with, or own, other companies.
The task of building the database was painstaking. Some companies remained a mystery after pulling the corporate registry documents and required more work.
Take Topanga Resources, for example. Topanga is listed by the regulator for not meeting its orphan fund levy or liability spending requirements in both 2022 and 2023, but that’s not the whole story.
Topanga is not an isolated entity.
Corporate registry documents show Topanga has one director and that another company, North Shore Petroleum, is the sole voting shareholder.
In other words, Topanga is the name of a company that is controlled by another firm.
Building the database revealed that another company, Pismo Energy Ltd., has the same sole director and the same sole voting shareholder, North Shore Petroleum.
All of a sudden, the liabilities associated with one company grow more significant — literally doubling in size to $14 million.
Going one layer deeper, corporate registry documents reveal that North Shore Petroleum itself is a web of individuals and companies who act as its voting shareholders, with one company, owned by a prominent Alberta businessperson, controlling the most votes (read all about our findings in our investigation).
Digging into the data revealed some tangled webs.
It is remarkably easy for individuals to be invisible behind layers of companies — many a jumble of numbers — in order to mask their involvement in a very public problem. Some of these individuals are well known for running large companies outside of the Alberta oil and gas sector, and many have deep connections to public and private leaders.
It is easy to get lost in big numbers — Alberta oil and gas well cleanup could cost tens of billions of dollars — or a list of faceless companies, but ultimately there are individuals who are making big decisions and financing extraction of the public’s oil and gas resources.
The database shows who some of those people are and what their responsibilities are with relation to pollution and remediation. It also gives new information about how companies — and the people behind them — could continue to drill for new oil and gas, despite skirting the rules.
The Alberta Energy Regulator makes its decisions about which companies will be granted permission to drill new wells based on the company name on a given application, not the people behind that name, except in certain circumstances.
Spokesperson Renato Gandia pointed to legislation and regulations that allow the organization to consider and sanction individuals associated with a company, but it’s not clear if that step has ever been taken.
Gandia also said companies are required to submit information about their corporate structure and that can be considered when determining the financial and regulatory risk presented by a licence holder. That information is not public.
In other words, to the public, Pismo is not Topanga is not North Shore and it’s certainly not the individuals who ultimately control the companies. Those same people could own and operate other companies that would not raise an eyeball if they started acquiring new licences under a different name.
And all of that means more oil and gas infrastructure dotted across Alberta, with big questions about whether a company will ever pay to clean it up.
The Narwhal will be digging into the list, finding connections and publishing the names of prominent Albertans who own and direct the companies the regulator alleges are not paying their cleanup bills (there’s the issue of unpaid taxes and leases, which is another topic).
It is also important to track and maintain the data, as the regulator removes the list of companies from the previous year once it provides its annual update.
Ultimately, that transparency is key.
Overall, The Narwhal’s findings raise serious questions about the regulator’s oversight of liabilities and its touted reforms that assign more risk to companies with stressed assets or financial strain. The Narwhal database shows the company name on the licence is only one part of the story.
Even with the level of digging undertaken by The Narwhal, we still haven’t been able to get to the bottom of each and every company, shell company, holding company and partnership.
If you have tips on who’s behind oil and gas companies in Canada that aren’t paying their bills, please contact Prairies reporter Drew Anderson over email at drew@thenarwhal.ca or securely over Signal at @Danderson.78
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