A little more than a year ago, during a time usually marked by lingering snowbanks and the first hints of spring, parts of Manitoba were engulfed in flames.

An early heat wave on the heels of several months of drought combined to produce ideal conditions for spring fires. 

Within days, the province was at the epicentre of what would become the second-worst wildfire season in Canadian history.

Between May and August, fires tore through 2.3 million hectares, decimated provincial parklands and forced more than 33,000 residents out of their homes. Two people died; at least one firefighter was severely injured.

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The scale of the disaster was unprecedented — so were the costs.

An analysis by The Narwhal and the Winnipeg Free Press found at least $500 million in expenses directly attributable to the wildfires — costs tied to emergency response, evacuations, damaged infrastructure, shuttered businesses, lost homes and much more. The true cost will never be known, as the impacts are far-reaching and far less tangible, and likely far, far higher.

But the tangible costs are many: wildfires scorched the provincial economy, burning through hundreds of millions in public funds, searing the bottom lines of several local businesses and taking a heavy toll on thousands of families’ finances. 

In the fiscal year including those wildfires, Manitoba spent $383 million on government emergency expenditures. Nearly all of that, $375 million, was attributed to wildfires, seven times more than what was budgeted.

To put that figure in perspective, the combined operating budgets of the Environment and Climate Change Department ($117 million) and the Department of Natural Resources ($147 million) totalled $264 million, meaning Manitoba spent 42 per cent more on emergency wildfire expenses last year than it did on the operating budgets for those two departments combined.

In a statement in response to a detailed list of questions, the government said a full picture of wildfire costs won’t be available until public accounts are released in September — after the next wildfire season has passed.

The statement described last year’s fires as “generational in nature,” but experts warn many of the same fire-prone conditions are still present. Fire weather is expected to be the norm in the future, as warmer temperatures dry out fuel sources and trigger more lightning storms, among other factors. 

The provincial budget’s risk outlook acknowledges the potential cost of that threat: “If similar conditions persist in 2026 — with climate change contributing to more frequent extreme weather events such as droughts — the province could face continued risks to employment, labour displacement, reductions in tourism and agricultural output and overall economic performance.”

Despite that, Manitoba’s $50-million emergency expenditure budget wasn’t changed for 2026. The government said it is “a sizable emergency expense contingency,” while also noting an increase in funding for wildfire preparedness, prevention and emergency management. 

The government has earmarked more than $4.5 million in new funding for additional seasonal firefighter positions and emergency management staff, upgraded weather and fire-mapping tools and aerial firefighting services.

Another year of devastating wildfires could further strain an economy navigating several stressors at once. Beyond the direct costs linked to firefighters, air tankers and evacuation support, natural disasters have profound indirect — though often unmeasurable — costs that ripple throughout the economy.

Wildfire protection budgets

In 2025, the province spent about $70 million across four departments to manage emergency wildfire response, including fire suppression equipment, provincial firefighters and emergency management teams. 

That’s expected to increase this year as the province aims to hire another 19 emergency firefighters, four conservation workers and 15 emergency management personnel. 

However, the budget for wildfire suppression — just under $14 million — has been relatively unchanged since 2022, even as Canada experienced two of its worst-ever fire seasons in 2023 and 2025. 

Two years earlier, in 2020, the wildfire suppression budget was more than double what it is today, at just under $30 million.

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As for staff, the Manitoba Government and General Employees’ Union, which represents members of the province’s wildfire service, released a report in December that noted 64 fire ranger positions and 25 per cent of wildfire division positions were vacant when the fire season began. 

“Our staffing levels are ’70s, ’80s levels — not current,” one staff member told the union. 

While the union has applauded this year’s five per cent increase to the conservation and wildfire service budget, it noted a full complement of staff with adequate training, equipment and compensation (Manitoba firefighters make the second-lowest hourly wage in the country) could help mitigate the growing risks associated with wildfires. 

“The 2025 fire season was not an outlier, but the new normal as the impacts of climate continue to wreak havoc on communities and natural areas,” the report said.

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Out-of-province firefighters

The severity of the fire season — combined with the depleted complement of firefighters — meant Manitoba needed significant out-of-province support to battle the summer blazes. 

Manitoba brought in more than 250 personnel, both from Parks Canada and provincial fire teams from Alberta, British Columbia, Quebec, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. The province also hosted another 250 firefighters from the United States, 200 from Mexico, 40 from France and 65 from New Zealand and Australia. 

The province did not provide a breakdown of its payments to other jurisdictions.

Instead, The Narwhal and Free Press reviewed publicly disclosed provincial government contracts valued over $10,000 and labeled: “Emergency services related to forest fires.” The review found 20 contracts worth a combined $6.5 million inked with other government departments.

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The Société de protection des forêts contre le feu, a non-profit fire protection agency based in Quebec, received about 40 per cent of those funds. The agency sent more than 150 firefighters from Quebec and France, as well as logistics support, through June and July. While Manitoba’s records show contracts totalling $2.8 million, the agency’s annual report indicates it billed Manitoba for more than $5.1 million in 2025. This suggests some out-of-province payments are not yet recorded in Manitoba’s contract records.

The province also paid $2.7 million to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre, which “coordinates the sharing of firefighting resources” across Canada, and helped mobilize aircraft and international personnel to fight the Manitoba fires, according to a statement from the centre. Manitoba also recorded eight contracts worth just under $500,000 for “other firefighting equipment.”

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Largest evacuation in Manitoba history costs millions

According to Manitoba’s recently released interim review of the wildfire season, it was “one of the largest evacuation operations in Manitoba’s history.” 

Consider the numbers: 59 communities impacted, more than 33,000 residents evacuated, including 4,100 air evacuations by the Canadian Armed Forces and 2,300 people temporarily relocated outside the province.

Both the Canadian and American Red Cross were called on to support evacuations; many evacuees lived in congregate shelters in Winnipeg, Thompson, Winkler and Portage la Prairie after hotels became overwhelmed. 

These evacuations, some of which lasted several weeks, others months, took an unprecedented toll. Evacuees suffered mental health impacts owing to the fear, uncertainty and stress of being separated from family and their homes, many missed school and work, or were forced to close their businesses. First Nations evacuees, particularly those in remote, northern communities, reported additional strain as they were relocated to urban environments, isolated from familiar foods, community and culture. 

Not all of these impacts can be quantified, but will nonetheless have long-lasting effects on many Manitoba communities.

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The financial responsibility for evacuee support is spread across federal, provincial and local governments, with Indigenous Services Canada responsible for evacuations affecting First Nations, and the federal government providing disaster financial assistance to affected municipalities. According to the interim review, nine disaster financial assistance payments have been made thus far, totalling $3.4 million.

While the province did not specify how much of the $375-million emergency expenditures were earmarked for evacuees, government contracts show Manitoba spent upwards of $60 million on accommodations, food, transportation and other evacuation support. 

Most of that money — $53 million — was paid to the Canadian Red Cross, which helped lead evacuations. These payments do not include the Red Cross’s work with Manitoba First Nations, which is paid for by Indigenous Services Canada. 

Contracts show approximately $4 million in space rental and cleaning fees, including a $1.7 million contract with Canad Inns, and 40 other contracts with hotels, inns and resort centres across Manitoba and western Ontario, where some evacuees were sheltered. 

Catering, groceries and other food bills amounted to $813,000, while the bill for planes, cars, fuel and other transportation was more than $3 million. 

Evacuations are particularly challenging for residents living in hospitals and personal care homes, or receiving regular medical care like dialysis appointments. According to Shared Health, Manitoba’s provincial health authority, the Flin Flon hospital was evacuated in May, as were personal care homes in Flin Flon, Lynn Lake and Thompson.

“The evacuation in the north was the biggest the province has seen,” Shared Health wrote in a May 2025 press release. 

Those patients were transported either by commercial, chartered or, in some cases, individual medivac flights, Jessica Davis, who served as the provincial air ambulance manager for Shared Health through the 2025 wildfire season, said in an interview. 

MedEvac flights cost between $10,000 and $20,000 each direction, she said, while commercial medical flights come with costs between $50,000 and $60,000. 

Shared Health has not yet compiled the final figures, but estimates more than 100 patients were evacuated from hospitals and personal care homes in northern communities. While some of the evacuation costs were shared with the federal government, Kristyn Ball, director of patient flow, noted at least one health-care facility sustained “significant damage,” and many others were costly to shut down and start up again during the evacuations. Davis emphasized the overtime accrued by health-care staff added to the evacuation costs.

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Damaged property, damaged infrastructure

Governments typically absorb the bulk of natural disaster costs, spreading the economic impacts across multi-billion-dollar budgets. For homeowners in the fire’s path, the impacts are acute.

According to the Insurance Bureau of Canada, insurers handled several thousand claims related to the Manitoba wildfires last year, the majority of which came from homeowners. 

In the wake of a natural disaster, Canada’s insurance companies navigate an influx of claims, ranging from “the worst, which is when people have lost everything,” to claims for evacuation-related expenses like hotel rooms and rental cars, Aaron Sutherland, the bureau’s Pacific and Western region vice-president, said in an interview. 

When the sum of insurance claims reaches $30 million, the industry conducts surveys to estimate the total recovery costs. The fires in the Flin Flon and Lac du Bonnet regions both met those thresholds, Sutherland said. 

Estimates compiled in September pegged insured damages from the Flin Flon and Lac du Bonnet fires at $250 million and $60 million respectively. They’re expected to be updated as the one-year mark approaches.

While these estimates help form a picture of the individual costs to rebuild after a fire, they’re only part of the picture. About 90 per cent of Canadians have some form of property insurance; those without may incur steep losses that are neither recoverable or tracked. 

“There’s a real human toll to these events as well,” Sutherland added. “If you’re in the unfortunate situation where you have lost everything, that has a massive impact on your life. Even if you’ve got your insurer there to help you begin to put those pieces back together, you’re looking at belongings, mementos, pictures, things like that, that you may never get back, and it’s absolutely devastating.”

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Even for those whose personal property is unscathed, damage to wider infrastructure can have knock-on effects.

Last year’s fires damaged more than 1,200 Manitoba Hydro poles, interrupting electrical service in several communities. Five generating stations were temporarily shut down or evacuated — the first time the utility has ever evacuated its power infrastructure — leading to about 70 megawatts of lost generating capacity. 

In addition to power interruptions, “telecommunications disruptions affected multiple communities, boil-water advisories were issued and postal and other essential services were suspended in several areas,” the review notes. 

According to a statement from the Crown utility, 1,500 customers were affected by power outages, “including some communities where the outages lasted for weeks or months.”

Manitoba Hydro estimates the wildfires cost the utility approximately $50 million between infrastructure repairs, emergency response crew wages and service interruptions.

It was “without doubt the most impactful wildfire season in Manitoba Hydro’s history, in terms of the number of assets impacted, employees involved in wildfire response, and communities impacted by power outages,” Peter Chura, Hydro’s media relations officer said.

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Meanwhile, the increasing frequency of wildfires, severe floods and other natural disasters is causing concern for the insurance industry. In time, it could lead to increased premiums as insurers look to balance growing recovery costs.

“Insurers, for a long time, have been a bit of a canary in the coal mine,” Sutherland said. 

“We are trending in the wrong direction in terms of the cost of these types of events. It’s a clear indication of the need for us, as a society, to improve our resilience.”

Insured damages from weather-related disasters totalled $14 billion nationwide between 2006 and 2015. In the decade since, that total has more than doubled to $37 billion, according to the Insurance Bureau of Canada. The average number of claims has doubled, too. 

“Insurance price is risk; that risk is growing. If we want to see a more affordable insurance marketplace, we have to take action to begin to reduce the risk facing communities, facing our properties and facing our families,” Sutherland said.

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Business closures dampen economic activity

In 2025, Natural Resources Canada released a research paper outlining a method to estimate the direct and indirect costs of extreme wildfires, acknowledging there are “numerous gaps” in the current understanding of socioeconomic impacts from wildfires.

The study notes it can take several months to fully understand how wildfires have impacted regional economies as business disruptions, lost opportunity costs and the impacts of ecosystem loss ripple through industries. 

Natural resource sectors including mining and forestry, as well as local tourism economies, tend to be most directly impacted by wildfires. For communities in the north, these industries are often the backbone of the local economy.

Last June, Statistics Canada estimated the potential economic disruption from the 2025 wildfires, and found 2.4 per cent of Manitoba’s GDP, including one quarter of the northern region’s economy, was at risk of fire-related disruption — the largest share of any province.

The fires that tore through the eastern portion of the province forced several popular provincial parks to remain closed throughout the busiest season. 

While it’s still too early to pinpoint the exact impact the 2025 wildfires had on visitation and revenue (numbers will be available in August), Travel Manitoba conducted an internal survey of tourism operators last summer to gauge the scope of the impacts, chief operating officer Angela Cassie said in an interview. 

A little more than half of tourism operators — from lodges and outfitters to campgrounds, festivals and outdoor recreation services, to restaurants and transportation — reported cancellations, Cassie said. 

Forty per cent reported lost revenue due to decreased visitation and 18 per cent had to close their businesses entirely for mandatory evacuations, she added.

Impacted businesses reported average revenue losses of about $175,000. 

“The earnings from that summer season often sustains their businesses all year,” Cassie said. “A lot of them are looking at the summer of 2025 as a lost summer.” 

For some businesses, the impacts will extend far beyond one season of depleted revenues. Five per cent reported damaged or lost property as a result of the fires, while others lost habitat, which could impact future bookings. 

One in 10 tourism operators reported mental-health challenges in response to the crisis, Cassie said. 

The high-profile nature of last year’s wildfires had an impact too. As Manitoba declared successive province-wide states of emergency, countries in Europe, for example, warned travellers of the risks of visiting Manitoba. As the province worked to shelter tens of thousands of evacuees, Premier Wab Kinew asked tourists to avoid booking hotel rooms. 

“There’s the physical loss because of cancellations or just people not booking last year but then are you losing people who are maybe now choosing other locations for the summer and not choosing Manitoba?” Cassie said.

Travel Manitoba is on a mission to “earn that business back” with a $1.35-million marketing campaign. The industry group has earmarked an additional $1.35 million for a wildfire assistance program that will cover up to 90 per cent of the cost of fire prevention equipment (such as sprinklers, hoses and water pumps) and training for tourism businesses. 

“This year will be really important for a lot of [businesses]. They’ve come through this winter extremely lean, so this summer is going to be extremely important,” Cassie said. 

The province’s mining industry was impacted, too, with at least four companies reporting shutdowns, evacuations or delays related to the wildfires. 

The Tanco lithium mine in eastern Manitoba, owned by Chinese company Sinomine, was evacuated in early May. Hudbay’s Snow Lake operation was shut down for seven weeks in July and August, incurring more than US$4 million in costs, according to the company’s financial reporting. Grid Metals’ Makwa facility was shuttered for several months, from early May until late July, and was only able to complete one day of field work in the second quarter.

Alamos Gold, near Lynn Lake, was investigated in connection with a major fire in the region, after a burn pile reignited at the MacLellan mine site. 

The company was forced to evacuate, delaying the ramp up of construction on a new mine and contributing to a 48 per cent increase in capital funding for the project, according to the company’s latest quarterly report.

Mining companies also contributed to evacuation and firefighting efforts in the communities where staff live and work, and donated a combined $1.25 million to the Red Cross relief effort.

While impacts to Manitoba’s forestry industry are not yet tabulated, analysis of fire boundaries shows 1.2 million hectares of the province’s logging licence areas burned — about 10 per cent of Manitoba’s regularly harvested forests.

According to the province’s economic development council, “wildfires lead to reduced supply, processing shutdowns and volatile price swings” for the forestry industry. The 2023 wildfires prompted a 20 per cent dip in June and July lumber production compared to the previous five-year average, according to a report from the Canadian Climate Institute.

“Whole regions now have nothing but young trees. There’s nothing to harvest,” B.C.-based wildfire researcher Bob Gray said last October.

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Intangible impacts: health, carbon emissions will add to future costs

The costs compiled here represent only a portion of the long-term economic impacts wildfires will have on Manitoba’s economy. It will take several months for government agencies and private companies to finish taking stock of the damage; some losses will never show up in financial records or industry reports.

For example, communities are left to clean up debris, remediate damaged sites and conduct inspections; these costs can be difficult to tabulate, according to the federal government’s report on the economic impacts of wildfires. 

Other indirect impacts are unlikely to be formally tied to the 2025 fires, making them challenging to capture when calculating the costs of a natural disaster.

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The Manitoba wildfires released a total 44 megatonnes of cumulative carbon emissions by mid-summer — a provincial record — according to data from the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service, part of the European Union’s environmental monitoring programme. That’s equivalent to two years of Manitoba’s annual, human-caused emissions. 

“As a result, smoke plumes repeatedly blanketed large parts of Canada and North America, and on several occasions travelled across the Atlantic, reaching western, central and eastern Europe,” the Copernicus report notes.

Wildfire smoke increases risk of respiratory and cardiovascular illness, putting long-term strain on health-care systems.

A Health Canada study published in 2024 estimates that between 2013 and 2018, air pollution from wildfire smoke contributed to 240 deaths from short-term exposure and 2,500 from long-term exposure, and generated annual health-care costs between $4.7 and $20 billion.

There were 18 days between May and October last year where Winnipeg’s daily average concentration of fine particulate matter — one way to measure wildfire pollutants — exceeded federal limits of 27 micrograms per cubic metre. The average concentration peaked at 57 micrograms per cubic metre in early June.

Only nine days exceeded federal limits in Winnipeg amid Canada’s worst-ever wildfires in 2023.

The trauma of fires, evacuations and destruction will also have far-reaching mental health impacts for impacted communities and the front-line workers responding to the crisis. 

“The mental-health support part of the [health-care] system is one that’s required long after the fire is out,” Jeff Martin, director of emergency and continuity management for Shared Health, said in an interview. 

With its interim review, Manitoba has started to strengthen its wildfire preparedness and response systems across several government departments. In addition to financial investments to boost emergency staffing and firefighting resources, the province plans to improve evacuee support with more culturally-responsive services, smoother registration systems, more robust financial support and more assistance geared at vulnerable populations. It plans to streamline its overall emergency funding processes, update its wildfire response guidelines and improve coordination and communication between agencies and jurisdictions. 

“We were as prepared as we could possibly have been for a season like we had,” Lisa Naylor, the minister responsible for the Emergency Management Organization, said at a news conference this week for the release of the interim report.

“We hope we won’t see a season like that this year and, at the same time, we’re going to be even more prepared.”

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Julia-Simone Rutgers is a reporter covering environmental issues in Manitoba. Her position is part of a partnership between The Narwhal and the Winnipeg Free Press.

Updated Friday, April 24, 2026, at 9:16 CT: This article has been updated to correct how much more the Manitoba government spent on emergency wildfire expenses compared to the total operating budgets of two of its departments. It was 42 per cent more, not 35, as previously stated.

Updated Friday, April 24, 2026, at 10:50 CT: This article has also been updated to correct an earlier statement from the Insurance Bureau of Canada about the total of insured damages from weather-related disasters in recent decades. The bureau clarified the figures were cumulative, not annual, as they had previously stated.

A beleaguered oil and gas company has left a multimillion-dollar cleanup bill in Alberta, The Narwhal has learned. Experts worry at least some of that bill could ultimately be passed on to taxpayers.

Last week, the Alberta Energy Regulator announced 4,031 wells, 383 facilities and 2,121 pipeline segments previously owned by Long Run Exploration Ltd. had officially become orphans, meaning they no longer have a legal or financial owner. The announcement did not specify a price tag for decommissioning or cleaning up any of the infrastructure.

But in a sworn affidavit filed early last year, the total liability of Long Run’s various assets was estimated at $476,834,036.95.

That means the Orphan Well Association, which is funded by an annual levy on industry and spent just under $130 million decommissioning and cleaning up old oil and gas infrastructure last year, now has a huge new liability on its hands. 

In one court document, they’re described as “mammoth environmental liabilities.”

According to the affidavit, Long Run’s oil and gas infrastructure ended up as orphans after a 2024 deal with a Chinese company fell through. That deal would have seen all of Long Run’s shares purchased for $22 million.

It wasn’t the first time the company had looked to Chinese investors when it faced financial troubles. In 2016, a financially struggling Long Run was purchased by Calgary Sinoenergy Investment Corp., its sole voting shareholder.

David Chem, reached by phone at Calgary Sinoenergy Investment Corp., told The Narwhal that Calgary Sinoenergy is a holding company and most of its shareholders are in China. “Actually, nobody calls,” he said. “I was surprised somebody called.”

Chem, who declined to share his title, said the company’s investors in China were not familiar with the concept of environmental liability regulation when they invested in Alberta oil and gas, as much of China’s oil and gas industry is state owned and private companies are not responsible for cleanup.

“A lot of Chinese investors put money into Alberta before they fully understood environmental liability because there’s no environmental liabilities in China,” he said. “They are trapped by environmental liability.”

He said the Chinese shareholders have paid for their mistake, and the blame rests on the original owners of Long Run. 

“How can you blame the Chinese owner? How can you say, ‘Oh, you guys didn’t take care of the orphan wells?’ ”

“They’re the guys who lost the most,” Chem said. “They’re the guys who lost all the money.”

Bill Andrew, who was the chairman and chief executive of Long Run Exploration at the time of that sale, pushed back on Chem’s assessment. 

“They came in with their eyes wide open,” he said by phone. “They went through a two-to-three month due diligence process,” he said, adding Long Run supplied well lists and information about all the company’s working interests. 

“We didn’t sell them a pig in a poke.”

‘The result of regulatory failure’: law professor

Meanwhile, even before Long Run’s assets were added to its inventory, the Orphan Well Association already had 4,200 wells on its list for decommissioning in Alberta. 

“In one swoop, it’s a huge jump,” University of Calgary law professor Shaun Fluker said in an interview. “It increasingly looks very likely these bets, these liabilities, will only ever be addressed with public money.”

Alberta’s Orphan Well Association is a not-for-profit organization that is theoretically funded by industry in the form of an annual levy, but has received government grants in the past and gets an annual interest-free loan from taxpayers.

“All of these problems are the result of regulatory failure,” Fluker said, describing the Orphan Well Association as an “industry-funded insurance system never designed to handle anything close to the size of these sorts of assignments.” Funding for the association, set by the regulator and paid by industry in the form of an annual levy, he said, is “wholly inadequate.”

Lars De Pauw, president and CEO of the Orphan Well Association, referred questions about the current cost of Long Run’s environmental liabilities to the Alberta Energy Regulator. “We have a multi-year plan to deal with all orphan assets including those from Long Run,” De Pauw said by email. “The plan is based on the amount provided from the orphan fund levy and other sources of revenue.”

In response to questions from The Narwhal, the Alberta Energy Regulator said by email it “does not have any further information to provide regarding Long Run’s total estimated liability.”

An unnamed spokesperson said the regulator uses tools within its liability management framework to ensure a company that takes over wells can eventually clean them up, and said it may “impose terms and conditions to mitigate any ongoing risks” and ensure regulatory obligations are met.

Andrew, who has been in the oil and gas industry for 52 years, points to the increasing number of wells falling to the Orphan Well Association. “You have to wonder who the hell was on top of them from a regulatory point of view,” he said. Andrew says when he ran Long Run, he made sure the company stayed on top of sealing old wells every year, ensuring a percentage of older wells were decommissioned each year.

Chinese investors lost millions in deal to save Long Run from financial ruin

Andrew oversaw Long Run back when it was called Galleon Energy and the company had a “nasty reputation on Bay Street and with public investors,” he said. Under his watch, the company was refinanced and its name was changed to Long Run in 2012.

In 2016, Long Run narrowly avoided financial ruin. That year, under Andrew’s leadership, the company was sold to China-based Sinoenergy Investment Corp. in a $780-million deal that included a $100-million purchase price and an agreement to take on hundreds of millions of the company’s debt, according to the Calgary Herald. 

“The deal was dubbed a Christmas miracle, reflecting Long Run’s precarious finances,” according to the Globe and Mail at the time.

Andrew told the Herald the sale was the best option for the heavily indebted company. “The alternative was grim,” he said then. The Canadian Press reported at the time that Long Run had faced a net earnings loss of $305 million in the most recent third quarter. 

“The banks were all over us. It was receivership or sell,” Andrew told The Narwhal, adding the bank facilitated an introduction with the investors.

Chem, with Calgary Sinoenergy Investment Corp., said the Chinese investors “bought from a local guy, right from the local owner.” 

“Who’s laughing? The previous owner,” he said. “They take the money and walk away.”

Andrew pushed back on that assessment. “We didn’t walk away, we sold the company,” he said.

“I did it the best I could do. I did it as fair as I could be,” he said. “When we sold Long Run, we didn’t sell it with a whole bunch of unpaid bills,” he said, adding the company was up to date on what it owed to landowners and counties.

To Chem, the big loser is the investors.

“They lost all their investment,” Chem said of shareholders in China, who he said he meets with annually. “All their investment, $800 million, is all gone.” 

“Their mistake is they should learn more about the system.”

According to Insolvency Insider Canada, “Calgary Sinoenergy is a holding company with no operation or assets other than its investment in Long Run.” All of its shares are held by another company, Sinoenergy Oil, which is based in the British Virgin Islands.

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Chem said the Chinese investors he works with are less interested in investing in Alberta oil and gas after seeing how it has played out with Long Run. “A lot of people lose money in Alberta. So I think they just say ‘no more.’ They walk away,” he said.

The Narwhal could not independently verify Chem’s assertions.

Fluker points to the massive 2015 oil price drop that saw a mad scramble for companies, many of them backed with foreign investment, to pick up Alberta oil and gas assets. “There were a number of these transactions at that time,” he said, pointing the finger at the Alberta Energy Regulator which would have approved the transfer of wells. “The regulator doesn’t appear to have scrutinized those transactions sufficiently.”

“That was really the beginning of the problem now we’re watching before our eyes.”

A last-ditch attempt to sell Long Run for $22 million in 2024 falls apart

In 2024, Long Run faced significant financial troubles again. It attempted to secure its financial footing with an agreement with a Chinese-based company, Hiking Group Shandon Jinyue Int’l Trading Corporation. That would have seen Long Run’s shares purchased for $22 million, but the company “faced challenges … transferring money out of China due to regulations of the Chinese State Administration of Foreign Exchange.”

In March 2025, Long Run entered into receivership. This is when a court-appointed third party acts as a custodian for a company facing serious financial troubles.

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Attempts to reach Long Run Exploration Ltd. went unanswered. PricewaterhouseCoopers, which is its receiver, confirmed it is acting as “manager of all current and future assets, undertakings and properties of Long Run Exploration Ltd” but declined to comment further. “The receivership proceedings are ongoing and as such, [PricewaterhouseCoopers] does not publicly comment on aspects of active receivership proceedings in the media,” spokesperson Anuja Kale-Agarwal said by email.

As is noted in documents filed by PricewaterhouseCoopers, any funds left over in Long Run’s accounts must be put toward cleaning up its mess. This requirement stems from the Redwater decision in 2019, when the Supreme Court ruled the money left over from a bankrupt oil and gas company must be used to clean up the wells it left behind before other debts, including bank loans, were prioritized.

As of February, the receiver noted it held approximately $26 million in its Long Run accounts, compared to the hundreds of millions in estimated costs to clean up its mess.

In March, it put $10 million of those funds toward clean-up.

Fewer than 500 wells were decommissioned by the Orphan Well Association last year

In 2025, Alberta’s industry-funded Orphan Well Association estimated the total cost to properly seal and clean up oil and gas on sites under its watch to be about $1.12 billion.

As of the end of March, the Orphan Well Association reported its inventory included 4,200 orphan wells that need to be safely sealed and more than 8,000 sites that need to be reclaimed.

These numbers have increased substantially. In 2013, the Orphan Well Association had just 387 orphan sites in its inventory of sites that needed to be reclaimed.

Susanne Calabrese, managing lawyer at the Alberta office of Ecojustice, is concerned what the increase means for the future. “Increasingly, profits are privatized, but cleanup is left behind — burdening landowners, municipalities and taxpayers. Companies are more than willing to take Albertan resources for profit, only to avoid the cost of cleaning up their contaminated sites through bankruptcy. This isn’t an anomaly — at this point, it seems to be their business model,” she said in an emailed statement.

“Long Run Exploration Ltd. … is not the first case of an oil and gas company walking away unscathed from costly cleanup obligations, nor will it be the last,” she added.

According to the association’s most recent annual report, fewer than 500 wells were decommissioned — meaning safely sealed — in the fiscal year ending in March 2025, while more than 2,000 new wells were added to its inventory during that time.

Andrew says it’s bad actors that contribute to the problem. He doesn’t think he’s one of them. “The properly run oil and gas companies are conscientious. They have staff and the resources to identify what needs to be done,” he said. “We don’t want to finish our lives and our careers thinking we make a mess of our country.”

“If you’re not putting a portion of your cash flow towards cleaning up your wells and cleaning up your properties, you should be lined up against the wall and shot,” he said. “Who has that sense of disregard to their country, that they leave a mess like that behind?”

According to the Government of Alberta, there are an estimated 466,000 oil and gas wells in the province. More than half of those are no longer producing, some of which have been properly plugged, while others are in a state of temporary suspension.

“It’s a bit scary when you think about it,” Fluker said. “It makes you wonder what else is out there. What’s next?”

Updated Friday, April 17, 2026, at 11:29 a.m. MT: This story was updated to include comment from the Alberta Energy Regulator that was received after publication.

Methodology

The Narwhal spoke by phone with David Chem, who responded to a voicemail left for Calgary Sinoenergy Investment Corp., which is based in Calgary and is the sole voting shareholder of Long Run. He declined to share his job title. The Narwhal also spoke by phone with Bill Andrew, former chairman and chief executive of Long Run Exploration Ltd.

The Narwhal emailed Long Run Exploration Ltd. but did not receive a response. The Narwhal also phoned Long Run’s emergency line, and was told to call Long Run’s main office. A message left at that number did not receive a response by publication time. An email sent to Wendy Barber, listed in court documents from March 2025 as Long Run’s interim chief executive officer, also did not receive a reply.

The law firm Dentons, listed in court documents as legal counsel for Long Run, replied by email to say it no longer represents Long Run and that questions should be directed to the court-appointed receiver, PricewaterhouseCoopers. 

PricewaterhouseCoopers declined to respond to specific questions, citing ongoing receivership proceedings.

On Thursday, the Alberta Energy Regulator announced more than 4,000 additional oil and gas wells are now officially orphans, meaning the industry-funded Orphan Well Association’s list of old wells to properly seal has nearly doubled.

According to the regulator, 4,031 wells, 383 facilities, 2,121 pipeline segments and 38 pipeline installations belonging to Calgary-based Long Run Exploration Ltd. have now been turned over to the Orphan Well Association.

Before Long Run’s assets were added to its inventory, 4,200 wells were already on the Orphan Well Association’s list of wells that needed to be decommissioned.

According to the association’s most recent annual report, fewer than 500 wells were decommissioned — meaning safely sealed — in the fiscal year ending in March 2025, while more than 2,000 new wells were added to its inventory during that time.

Lars De Pauw, the president of the Orphan Well Association, said by email not all the Long Run wells need to be sealed. “Our initial review indicates that about one-third of the wells are already decommissioned but we are anticipating close to 3,000 new wells in addition to our current 4,200,” he said by email.

Organizations had already been ringing alarm bells about the issue earlier this month. At the end of March, the Alberta Energy Regulator announced it was increasing the orphan well levy — a fee charged on oil and gas licences to cover the costs of cleaning up orphan wells — by seven per cent. But as watchdogs were quick to point out, the orphan count increased 29 per cent last year.

“This is not good enough, plain and simple,” Ecojustice lawyer Susanne Calabrese said in a statement at the time. “The shortfall is already being felt in the province, and taxpayers are paying the price for the gap — all while the risks and costs continue to climb.” 

A spokesperson for the Alberta Energy Regulator said by email the new levy amount was endorsed by the Government of Alberta, adding it “will support the Orphan Well Association’s operating budget for the 2026/27 fiscal year.”

As of 2025, the Orphan Well Association estimated total costs to properly seal and reclaim orphan oil and gas sites in Alberta that were on the inventory at the time was approximately $1.12 billion.

That doesn’t include the thousands more on the list now.

“This is the largest single transfer in history, and it almost doubles the [Orphan Well Association’s] inventory overnight,” Janetta McKenzie, director of the oil and gas program at the Pembina Institute, told The Narwhal by email.

“While this single insolvency means the number of orphan wells will spike by nearly 100 per cent this year, the amount of industry funding required by the provincial government to clean these wells up has risen by only seven per cent. This is clearly inadequate for the scale of the problem,” she added. “It leaves Albertans to bear the harms associated with unremediated wells near their homes and businesses.”

So what’s this all about? Here’s what you need to know.

What is an orphan well anyway?

An orphan well is one that no longer has a legal or financial owner. 

Most often, an oil and gas company that has gone bankrupt has left behind a long list of wells that were never properly decommissioned or cleaned up — and someone has to pay for that. In the meantime, the well, or pipeline or other related facility, becomes an “orphan.” 

But even without an owner, it still needs to be properly plugged and reclaimed, according to provincial rules.

How many orphan wells are there in Alberta?

As of the end of March, Alberta’s Orphan Well Association reported its inventory included 4,200 orphan wells that need to be safely sealed and more than 8,000 sites that need to be reclaimed.

These numbers have increased substantially in recent years. In 2013, the Orphan Well Association had just 387 orphan sites in its inventory of sites that needed to be reclaimed. 

But a lot of the concern about orphan wells comes not just from the current inventory, but from the potential for thousands more to be added to the list. 

According to the Government of Alberta, there are an estimated 466,000 oil and gas wells in the province. More than half of those are no longer producing, some of which have been properly plugged, while others are in a state of temporary suspension.

Either way, once a well is no longer active, it’s no longer making a company any money.

In fact, it does the opposite. Oil and gas companies have to pay costs associated with sites they’re no longer using. 

For example, they’re supposed to pay rent to the owner of the land where the well is located, as well as taxes to the local government. That said, it has been more and more common in recent years that companies don’t pay landowners or their tax bills.

All of this means an inactive well can be a costly burden to a company, especially one that’s already struggling financially.

What is the Orphan Well Association?

Alberta’s Orphan Well Association is a not-for-profit organization that is theoretically funded by industry, but actually has received government grants in the past and gets an annual interest-free loan from taxpayers.

It takes over responsibility for cleanup when no company is legally or financially responsible for a well or related pipeline or facility.

According to the association’s most recent annual report, it spent nearly $130 million on cleaning up and sealing orphan wells, pipelines and related facilities in the fiscal year that ended in 2025. 

The Orphan Well Association is overseen by a board of directors made up of industry representatives from the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, Cenovus, Canadian Natural Resources Limited (CNRL) and others, as well one representative of the Alberta Energy Regulator.

Who’s supposed to pay to clean up orphaned wells?

The short answer: industry.

The idea is that all companies pay into the orphan well fund, to make a pool of money available for when companies go bankrupt, or otherwise walk away from their liabilities. Last year, the orphan well levy added up to $144.45 million.

In theory, this fund should be enough money to fund orphan well cleanup in the province. But as clean-up bills have ballooned, the auditor general and other critics have warned this may not be the reality.

“Every year that we underfund this cleanup is another year contaminants remain in the ground, water and air — putting landowners’ health, property values and livelihoods at risk. Meanwhile, taxpayers are left picking up the tab,” Ecojustice said in a statement earlier this month.

Updated at Friday, April 10, at 4:12 p.m. MT: This story was updated to include information received by email after publication time from the Orphan Well Association.

Internal government emails show staff at the Canada Water Agency trying to make sense of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s budget cuts in response to questions from the media.

The Canada Water Agency launched in October 2024 to help protect Canada’s fresh water, including leading restoration work to clean up the Great Lakes, Lake Winnipeg and other important sources of drinking water. Canada is home to 20 per cent of the world’s fresh water, which is being threatened by climate-driven floods, droughts and algal blooms, as well as industrial contamination and other groundwater stressors.

Carney’s first federal budget proposed $3.8 million in lower spending by 2029-30 at the agency, and a further $1.2 million categorized as a separate “ongoing,” or permanent spending reduction, for a total of $5 million in cuts. They were part of Carney’s $60 billion in proposed cuts — split into $48 billion in spending reductions through 2029-30, and a further $12 billion in “ongoing” cuts with no given end date.

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The Narwhal reported on the budget in November, summarizing the government’s proposal as cutting $5 million in total spending at the agency over a number of years. After that story was published, the agency emailed The Narwhal with a request for a “small correction,” asking that figure be changed to $3.8 million.

When The Narwhal asked the agency why it shouldn’t include the $1.2 million in ongoing spending cuts in the figure — which would make it $5 million — internal emails released under Access to Information law show staff reached out to Finance Canada, sharing a screenshot of the budget’s spending review page for the agency with the proposed “ongoing” cut circled in red. 

“Hello Finance Department colleagues, we are fact-checking an article in The Narwhal that mentions the [agency]’s budget cuts, and just want to make sure we are understanding the budget chart correctly,” the agency wrote. 

The water agency asked the Finance Department whether the $5-million figure, which it had already asked The Narwhal for a correction on, was in fact, correct.

After the Finance Department said it would look into the matter, the water agency asked for guidance on how to explain the permanent portion of the spending reductions to journalists.

“Do you have messaging you can share around communicating the ‘ongoing’ to the media?” the staff member asked.

The next day, an official at Finance Canada said the story did not need a correction after all.

Canada Water Agency to cut 13 jobs, but continue restoration and protection of fresh water

Last month, a Canada Water Agency planning document showed how it expected to absorb the first three fiscal years’ worth of cuts, amounting to $2.6 million by 2028-29. One result was the loss of roughly 13 jobs, or what’s known as full-time equivalent positions, from a workforce of 223.

It said it was also planning on “modernizing government operations” and “leveraging new technology” as well as making administrative and support functions more efficient.

At the same time, the agency plans to keep conducting water quality and ecosystem restoration, including in the Great Lakes, it said.

The federal budget says cuts are necessary to “rein in government spending” from pandemic highs. Carney has gone on to trumpet other multibillion-dollar investments in areas like the military, technology and infrastructure that could in turn pose new environmental challenges for water.

Last week, the Canada Water Agency took on a new task when the Carney government promised $3.8 billion to “protect nature” as part of a new environmental strategy. The agency will be working on the country’s first National Water Security Strategy meant to reflect Indigenous knowledge systems including water stewardship.

The Narwhal emailed the Canada Water Agency asking how its spending cuts will affect freshwater stewardship and restoration work.

A spokesperson said the government’s budget cuts would not impact the agency’s “planned activities, staffing and funding commitments for restoration and protection” of its eight freshwater ecosystem initiatives through Canada’s Freshwater Action Plan, a “signature” federal program.

The program includes the Great Lakes, lakes like Simcoe and Winnipeg and rivers like the St. Lawrence in Ontario and Quebec, and the Mackenzie in the Northwest Territories. Former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s 2023 federal budget allocated $650 million over 10 years to these freshwater initiatives.

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“Like all federal organizations, the Canada Water Agency is contributing to the government’s plan to reduce spending, eliminate duplicative programs and focus resources on core priorities,” the spokesperson wrote.

“The agency remains fully committed to delivering on its mandate to improve freshwater management in Canada by providing leadership, effective collaboration federally and improved coordination and collaboration with provinces, territories and Indigenous Peoples to proactively address national and regional transboundary freshwater challenges and opportunities.”

The agency also told The Narwhal the reduction in jobs would be staggered, with four next fiscal year, followed by another four the year after and five more after that.

Asked how the agency was planning for the budget’s proposed $1.2 million in permanent cuts, the spokesperson reiterated the budget review was meant to ensure government spending was sustainable and funding cost-effective programs and activities.

Federal funds support water conservation in Ontario and the Great Lakes

The spending reductions come at a time when the Ontario government is amalgamating its watershed protection agencies, called conservation authorities, from 36 to nine, as well as moving to give itself the power to dictate more rules around drinking water. 

Federal funding has been important for conservation authorities because Ontario has not been investing as much in community science and ecosystem restoration, Catherine Febria, the Canada Research Chair in freshwater restoration ecology, said. 

An associate professor at the University of Windsor’s Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research, Febria said that the federal “scale of investment is something that the province was never able to do.”

“That was really exciting, it was like a leapfrog in progress with this single initiative, and a number of large-scale projects were invested in [over] the first two years,” she said, naming the freshwater ecosystem initiatives in places like the Great Lakes as one example.

The federal government and Ontario have been working together “for over 50 years” through a series of agreements on protecting and conserving the Great Lakes, the spokesperson for the Canada Water Agency said. 

As one example, the Canada-Ontario Agreement on Great Lakes Water Quality and Ecosystem Health lays out how the two will coordinate protection efforts.

“This partnership has led to remarkable improvements, including dramatic reductions in harmful pollutants, and the return of pollution-sensitive species such as bald eagles,” the spokesperson wrote.

Ontario’s Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks did not respond to questions from The Narwhal about how much provincial funding was going towards efforts to restore freshwater ecosystems, and to what extent the ministry was working with the federal water agency.

Febria said given the federal water agency is still relatively new, it’s still not clear what its full mandate will be, not to mention if or how the proposed cuts will impact its work or what exactly may be lost.

She said another Carney initiative, directing $1.7 billion toward a series of scientific initiatives, including research awards attracting high-level talent from abroad, holds promise. Some of the research awards will focus on water security, environment and climate resilience. 

Still, it’s a “tricky balance,” she added, between investing in research and also carrying out on-the-ground work to improve local areas.

“I think we need both,” she said. “When the pendulum swings towards a whole bunch of researchers, that’s great, but at the end of the day, we still need people and organizations and communities on the ground.”