Commissioned by Jobs for Today, a project of the Centre for Civic Governance, Jobs in Oil and Gas Well Cleanup in Alberta, B.C. and Saskatchewan finds that finds cleaning up Western Canada’s backlog of unplugged and unremediated oil and gas wells could create approximately 11,000 full-time jobs over the next 25 years.
The first ground-up assessment of labour demand in the well cleanup sector in Western Canada, the report draws on interviews with workers and contractors from 10 active cleanup firms. It estimates that completing the remaining lifecycle work on the region’s approximately 381,000 unplugged wells would require around 281,000 job-years of work across five stages: plugging, cut and cap, demolition, site assessment, and remediation.
This matters for communites. Unplugged wells leak methane, benzene, and other hazardous compounds, putting the country’s air, farmland, climate and drinking water at risk, while denying thousands of workers access to employment. Companies committed to this closure work when they drilled the majority of their wells, today totalling more than 700,000 wells across Western Canada. Yet many companies have deferred or avoided this work. Some have gone bankrupt, leaving taxpayers to cover the costs.
The report calls on governments to hold companies accountable to their legal cleanup obligations, enforce higher labour standards to ensure the work delivers decent, well-paying jobs, and strengthen cleanup requirements to protect communities and the environment.
For more information and media inquiries, please contact Melissa Gregerson via mgregerson@ccg.eco