Alberta landowner files conflict-of-interest complaint against Danielle Smith appointee

File photo of David Yager. (Source: Alberta Energy Regulator)

An Alberta landowner dealing with an orphan gas well on his property wants an investigation into an oil industry insider and advisor to Premier Danielle Smith. David Yager led the creation of a controversial strategy that would shift the burdens of oil and gas well clean up from industry to the public, while also advertising his services as an industry consultant.

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Yager is a long-time oil and gas industry insider who has worked as an executive for a handful of oilfield companies, including Tesco Corporation, which he founded. Yager’s business website offers consulting services for the oil and gas service industry. At the same time, he is sitting on the board of the Alberta Energy Regulator and acting as a “special advisor” to Premier Danielle Smith.

The complaint, filed to the Ethics Commissioner by Ecojustice on July 22, alleges Yager’s role in the creation of the controversial Mature Asset Strategy violated the Conflict of Interest Act.

“He can’t have all those roles at the same time,” Susanne Calabrese, staff lawyer at Ecojustice, said in a phone interview with Canada’s National Observer.

“In our opinion, it’s impossible to represent the interests of a part of the government, an independent regulator, private companies and then the public, all at the same time.”

Reached by phone, Yager declined to comment on the complaint.

Canada’s National Observer received two unattributed, emailed statements from the Office of the Minister of Energy and Minerals defending Yager’s appointment.

“Mr. Yager has been contracted to work with the Government of Alberta based on the unique skills and experience he brings from a long career in the oil and gas sector, as well as the valuable perspective he brings to significant issues relating to the energy sector,” the statement read.

“Mr. Yager has not had any clients in the oil and gas industry since he signed a contract with Energy and Minerals in 2023. The website referenced in the letter is simply outdated.”

The statement said Yager is compliant with the conflict of interest rules and his contract was reviewed by the department’s contract review committee which “confirmed that there would not be a conflict of interest related to his contributions to the Mature Asset Strategy or the advice he would be providing.”

The statements also referenced his over 50 years of experience in upstream oil and gas and time as founder, executive officer and director of three publicly traded oilfield service companies “specializing in wellbore construction, completion, remediation, abandonment, production optimization, regulatory compliance and the physical protection of workers, assets and the community.”

‘We didn’t know if it’s leaking’

Dwight Popowich has been fighting for nearly eight years to clean up an inactive, orphaned gas well on his property, about a quarter mile from his house. A few months ago he managed to get the well designated as an orphan well through the industry-funded Orphan Well Association, which is supposed to trigger a clean up process, but was told it will be 10 to 12 years before it is reclaimed.

He filed the complaint almost four months after the strategy to deal with aging oil and gas infrastructure was released and widely criticized by landowner associations, environmental groups and the Rural Municipalities of Alberta.

“How is this protecting my rights? It’s like my rights are totally ignored as a landowner, as a taxpayer,” he told Canada’s National Observer in a phone interview.

“When you sit on the Alberta Energy Regulator board you’re supposed to be independent from government. Well, how is he independent from government and he’s a special advisor to the premier at the same time?” Popowich said.

Popowich said the well has thrown a wrench in his plans to sell the property because no one wants to buy a liability. And if the gas well on his property is leaking he would never be the wiser because it would be colourless and odorless and require someone with special equipment to detect.

“These are industrial sites. They have dangerous vapors coming off of them. Some of them are explosive, some of them are poisonous, some of them are both,” Popowich said.

“We didn’t know if it’s leaking, if it’s safe.”

Billions in liabilities

Alberta is littered with defunct oil and gas wells. The Mature Asset Strategy estimated there are 274,215 well sites that have not been reclaimed. Of those, about 101,000 are classified as “marginal,” meaning they currently produce very little oil or gas and are on the way out. Some are “abandoned” and sealed off with concrete, while others are left unplugged and called “orphaned” wells because no company is legally responsible for cleaning them up. Though estimates vary, the cost to deal with all these wells is astronomical. The Alberta Energy Regulator has clean-up billed at about $36 billion while a 2023 research paper from the School of Public Policy estimates current liabilities are at least $60 billion.

To deal with the problem, Alberta commissioned the creation of the Mature Asset Strategy, led by Yager, which was developed through months of closed-door discussions with oil and gas companies and other stakeholders. Of the 98 participants consulted on the strategy, at least 50 participants were from the oil and gas industry, with another 10 participants referred to as technical and engineering. No participants from environmental groups or landowner or citizen groups are listed. Three were listed as Indigenous “Ministries/Organizations/Representatives.”

The Rural Municipalities of Alberta, which participated in the process, criticized the report as focusing too much on recommendations that benefit industry, with little regard for impacts on municipalities, landowners, the environment and the broader public interest.

The recommendations are vague but there is a common “narrative of lessening environmental standards,” Calabrese said. For example, one of the recommendations in the strategy suggested existing defunct oil and gas well sites could be outfitted with solar panels instead of undergoing full reclamation, saying this arrangement would deliver “both environmental and economic benefits.”

“When we look at the whole process, we realize that the whole thing probably had a predetermined outcome before it was even started,” Popowich said.

“A flawed process, potentially tainted by conflicts of interest, leads to a flawed product,” Calabrese said. “We’re really concerned that the public did not get what they paid for with a Mature Asset Strategy because of all these conflicts of interest, and that’s why we want the ethics commissioner to look into this matter.”

‘This is their circus; this is their monkeys’

All of this runs counter to the polluter pays principle, which states companies should bear the cost of cleaning up their messes, not taxpayers, Popowich said. Oil and gas companies are notorious for not paying taxes to municipalities and this is another key issue critics say was not adequately addressed in the strategy.

Landowners like Popowich are supposed to be paid a land lease by the company operating on their land, but if a company goes bankrupt the payments stop and landowners have to apply to the government to receive the money.

The result? Alberta taxpayers pay millions of dollars in these failed land lease payments, Calabrese said.

“This was created by the industry. This is their circus; this is their monkeys. We should have nothing to do with this,” Popowich said.

Yager was hired to do this work, and previous work, through a series of four sole source contracts with the government of Alberta and the complaint asks the ethics commissioner to investigate this for possible violations of Alberta’s procurement and sole course contract policy.

Yager’s website says he encouraged Smith to run for leadership of the Wildrose Party in 2009 and boasts he was the top fundraiser for her leadership bid that year.

“It’s very interesting that after she was sworn into office only a few months later he’s then had four back-to-back sole source contracts awarded,” Calabrese said.

Yager’s first contract in 2023 was $60,000 for “Advisory Council on Alberta’s Energy Future”; the report was never made public. Later that year he was awarded a $70,000 contract to complete a review of the AER. In 2024, he received $136,000 for “Professional Services” and this year saw him awarded $156,000 for “Advisory Services” thought to be related to the Mature Asset Strategy, according to the Ecojustice complaint.

If the ethics commissioner decides to investigate Popowich’s complaint it will eventually submit a report with its findings to the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly with recommendations on what should happen next, Calabrese explained.

By Natasha Bulowski, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Canada’s National Observer