NL Fisher Supervision and Engineering Ltd. (NL Fisher) and West Earth Sciences Ltd. (West) are pleased to announce a new joint venture that provides their clients with a ‘one-stop-shop’ for all their above and below ground oil and gas well closure activities.

The joint venture combines NL Fisher’s significant expertise in wellbore operations including mature asset retirement, annular communication and surface leakage, contaminated site reclamation and methane and GHG emissions reduction with West’s proven track record in all aspects of above ground reclamation and remediation.

“NL Fisher is excited to work with West Earth Sciences through our new joint venture,” said Mike Cameron, President and CEO, NL Fisher.  “The joint venture combines West’s surface expertise with NL Fisher’s downhole experience, maximizing the strengths of both organizations.”

“With the Government of Alberta’s Site Rehabilitation Program (SRP) launch in 2020, the creation of this joint venture was a natural extension to our service offerings,” said Jeremy Cheyne, President & CEO, West Earth Sciences. “As a Certified Aboriginal Company, per the terms of the SRP, clients working with our joint venture are eligible to receive 100% of the SRP Grant money available to them in each phase of the program effectively doubling the potential environmental and economic benefit of the program.”

For more than 30 years, NL Fisher has provided its clients with cradle-to-grave data analytics-based solutions for all aspects of their oil and gas operations including successfully completing millions of dollars in cut and cap, riser, pipeline piling and surface equipment removal operations in Alberta, Saskatchewan and British Columbia.

West Earth Science Ltd. is an integrated environmental and geomatics company delivering professional services and on-site field solutions. 
Contact us to find out how NL Fisher and West Earth Sciences can help your company achieve its site closure and reclamation work objectives while maximizing the benefit of the SRP to your business.

About the Site Rehabilitation Program (SRP)

According to the Government of Alberta website, there are an estimated 162,500 active wells, 97,000 inactive wells and 71,000 abandoned wells in Alberta. As of April 15, 2020, the Orphan Well Association had an inventory of 2,983 orphan wells for abandonment and 3,284 sites for reclamation.

On May 1, 2020, the Government of Alberta launched the SRP, which provides grants to oil field service contractors to perform well, pipeline, and oil and gas site closure and reclamation work.

The SRP aims to immediately get Alberta’s specialized oil and gas labour force back to work, accelerate site abandonment and reclamation efforts and quickly complete a high volume of environmentally-significant work.

The SRP has up to $1 billion in funding available from the federal government’s COVID-19 Economic Response Plan for eligible abandonment and reclamation projects.

Qualifying work includes wellsite abandonment, pipeline abandonment, pipeline segment removal, facility abandonment, environmental site assessments, remediation and reclamation.

Let NL Fisher and West Earth Science deliver Your Well Closure Needs 

To date, NL Fisher and West Earth Science have successfully achieved approvals in all four Phases of the SRP for Environmental and Abandonment scopes.

“According to the latest AER Roundtable statistics, West Earth Sciences represent approximately 15-20% of all of the applications submitted by aboriginal companies for Phases 3 and 4. As a Certified Aboriginal Company we help operators maximize their allotments on Phase 4 with 100% application funding,” said Cheyne.

Alberta SRP Period 5 (The Big Round) – Funding Details:

• The Fifth application period is scheduled to open February 1, 2021.
• Period Funding - $300M.
• Allocations will be by Operator based on the number of well/facility licenses.
• Operator must have produced in 2019/20.
• Operator must have demonstrated spend on closure activities in 2019/20.
• Initial Allocation List will be provided when Period 5 is announced. There will be a 4 week period for Operators to update One Stop in order to demonstrate closure spend for the associated time period to be eligible for funding.
• Same incentives for Aboriginal content as Phase 4 - 50% cost coverage for non-aboriginal and 100% cost coverage for Certified Aboriginal.
• Applications period will start 8-10 weeks after the Period 5 is announced to account for “Planning”.
• This period will focus on those Operators that are producing and have demonstrated the ability and internal resources to execute closure activities in 2019-20.