I argued this one a number of pages back, but I think the uproar over this reclamation/royalty pilot is misplaced.
Reclamation spend is already deductible for royalty and tax purposes. This isn't a new concept. At least the way I understand it (oil sands is my area of expertise, not conventional).
So if these companies spent the money to clean the wells back in the day, they would have deducted those costs and Albertans would have received directionally less royalty and tax revenue.
But they didn't, so we got more...effectively meaning we "overcollected". This program would effectively undo that and net it all out (ignoring puts and take like on one side the time value of money benefit of keeping the extra money for a long time, and on the other the inflationary costs of clean up activities).
For those who may better understand the current conventional royalty and reclamation frameworks, what am I missing here?
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