Alberta farmers are furious over the business practices of one of the province’s largest oil companies, saying it has taken financial advantage of them over the years.
Ember Resources, a subsidiary of Brookfield, has a vast portfolio of over 12,000 wells across Central Alberta as well as nearly 13,000 kilometers of pipeline. But many Albertans who lease land to Ember say the company has mistreated them.
Under Alberta law, oil companies pay farmers rent to lease plots of land surrounding their wells and facilities, as these plots are not farmable while the equipment is there. Companies draw up surface leases with landowners in which yearly rent rates are fixed.
However, many landowners are unhappy with Ember’s tactics regarding these leases over the years. Some say Ember has presented them with one-sided rent reductions, while others say the company has simply not paid its bills.
Landowners and lease holders have filed over 250 claims to recover Ember surface lease compensation through Alberta’s Land and Property Rights Tribunal (LPRT) since 2022 alone.
Most claims are small change – few are for more than $3,000. Some are as small as $80. While the tribunal itself does not have the authority to enforce payments, landowners say government legislation has made it too easy for companies such as Ember to avoid surface lease payment.
Ember says it holds itself to a high standard. Its code of business conduct requires the company to “respect, protect, and support human rights.” They are also “committed to treating all landowners fairly and equally.”
Landowners told TheRockies.Life that Ember hasn’t maintained this standard in practice. One landowner said in an interview, “They threaten, they bully, they intimidate.”
Ember Resources did not respond to TheRockies.Life’s requests for comment regarding surface lease payments and landowner relations.
The value of a life
Julia and Mike Waddy have been fighting with Ember since 2018 about the company’s surface lease for a plot of land on their farm in Lacombe County.
Mike Waddy discovered years ago that the surface lease was not located on the lease site. He also alleged that it was sized incorrectly. He brought the issue up to Ember, hoping to be compensated for the size adjustment and the incorrect placement.
“They weren’t willing to discuss with us anything about the rent,” he told TheRockies.Life in an interview.
The situation only escalated. After an Ember employee half-jokingly said to him that he should disassemble the equipment on the site, Mike said he would take him up on the offer. After that, he said “Ember tried to get the RCMP to charge me for destruction of a pipeline, even though they gave me permission to do it,” and even though Mike never actually disassembled any part of the structures.
In 2024, Julia Waddy attempted suicide.
“Since dealing with this, both Mike and I have seen a huge decline in my mental health,” she said in an interview. “My life was hanging by a thread.”
She and Mike informed Ember of her view that their tactics were partially responsible for her suicide attempt, but the company did not respond to the comments.
“We were asking for an increase from $500 a year to $2,000. Now they have probably spent probably half a million dollars on legal fees and fighting and court,” Julia said.
Government “addicted” to oil royalties
One farmer 35 minutes east of Red Deer agreed to share his story on the condition that he remain anonymous, as he feared Ember’s retribution in his ongoing case against them.
Five years ago, he discovered that Ember was reducing the rent for the sites on his property as well as many in the area when he was instructed to plow a smaller area of snow around them. “This meant if there was deep snow and an emergency on site the trucks would not be able to get past each other to exit,” he told TheRockies.Life.
The farmer filed a recovery of compensation claim through the LPRT as he disputed Ember’s reductions.
When the farmer calculated that Ember was already nearly $7,000 behind on rent, they asked to drill a new well. “I said they must be dreaming,” the farmer said. Still, Ember paid their debts to the farmer and drilled.
The following spring, the farmer said he found a significant oil spill next to the new well.
“Oil companies can spill on a lease so badly that the whole quarter is blacklisted by banks and the quarter can not be used for collateral or sold and the spill doesn’t have to be cleaned up until the end of the life of the well. We have terrible one-sided dealings with energy companies but if they decide to drill on our land we have no real way of keeping them out,” he said.
The man has tried to seek help from government bodies, but Alberta law does not lay out any consequences for oil companies that do not pay their surface leases. He wonders whether this isn’t because the government has more to gain financially from letting oil companies off the hook than from protecting Albertans.
“It seems the government has become addicted to the royalties they receive from energy and will turn themselves inside out to accommodate companies,” he said.
Experts express similar thoughts. As University of Calgary Public Interest Law Clinic Executive Director Shaun Fluker told TheRockies.Life in an email, “The Alberta government seems willing and fine with increasingly using taxpayer money to pay landowners who are left unpaid by oil and gas companies.”
Passing the buck
Russel Wildeman, Chair of the Chain Lakes Gas Co-op, noticed recently that two of the co-op’s customers were not using co-op gas anymore. He believes the two entities are now taking gas from Ember high pressure lines located on their properties, and suspects that the entities have entered into a deal with Ember to accept reduced rent rates for the surface leases on their property in exchange for use of Ember’s gas.
He has brought the issue to the government’s attention, as typically under Alberta law the gas co-op is entitled to a compensation package if they lose a customer to another company.
Instead, he’s seen the government blame the customers and respond by deliberating over which government office is responsible for the problem, Wildeman told TheRockies.Life. “The Alberta government told us that they can’t do anything about Ember because their line is under AER rules instead of the Rural Gas Distribution Act,” he said.
“It almost seems more important for the government to keep [wells] out of the orphan well system than it is to uphold the rules,” he said.
In response to a request for comment, the LPRT told TheRockies.Life that they have “heard from Albertans that they would like the Tribunal to be more accessible to landowners. In response to this, the tribunal will be hosting open houses this fall to inform landowners of their surface rights.”
