The IJF has identified nearly 600 Alberta companies responsible for millions of dollars of municipal tax arrears and unpaid leases to landowners. Unpaid oil and gas property taxes have created an increasingly large burden for local governments in Alberta. Rural municipalities reported companies owed $81 million in cumulative tax arrears in 2018. As of the […]

Neil Johnson came home from a conference on artificial intelligence with dollar signs in his eyes. At a council meeting in his home of Newell County a few weeks later, Johnson set about convincing everyone else of the riches he’d caught a glimpse of. “We’ve got an opportunity here that, when you start adding up […]

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has long demanded the federal government roll back climate policies, further support its highly polluting fossil fuel sector, and threatened a constitutional unity crisis if she doesn’t get her way.  On Thursday, Prime Minister Mark Carney blinked.  The two leaders signed a memorandum of understanding that immediately exempts Alberta from clean […]

The truck slowly pulled alongside as I idled at the side of a remote dirt road in northern B.C. No cell service, the nearest town half an  hour away. I’d pulled off to let industrial traffic heading the other  direction pass. It was 2022 and I was on my way to meet with Indigenous  land […]

The Alberta government paid more than $30 million on behalf of delinquent oil and gas companies in 2024, The Narwhal has learned. The companies failed to pay rent owed to landowners for the use of their property for oil and gas activities. This represents a 4,500 per cent increase in the amount of money the […]

This investigation is a collaboration between The Narwhal and the Investigative Journalism Foundation. The British Columbia government quietly granted one of Canada’s biggest oil and gas companies an exemption for thousands of pipelines that should have been deactivated before a legal deadline, according to documents obtained under freedom of information legislation. In 2020, the BC […]

Alberta’s government is proposing a law it says would ban federal employees from going on any oil-related sites — from wellheads to corporate head offices — but critics say the province doesn’t have the legal right to do so. Premier Danielle Smith said Wednesday the goal is to keep federal staffers away from any place […]

Alberta’s government is proposing a law it says would ban federal employees from going on any oil-related sites — from wellheads to corporate head offices – but the NDP says it’s an illegal and performative distraction. Premier Danielle Smith says the goal is to keep federal staffers away from any place where oil and gas […]

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Indigenous leaders from the Peruvian Amazon who are calling for the government to stop oil and gas projects in their territory took their case to an international human rights body on Tuesday. The leaders presented evidence of the impact of oil and gas exploration at a hearing before the Inter-American Commission […]

This investigation is a collaboration between The Narwhal and Investigative Journalism Foundation. On a warm mid-August afternoon in 2022, a BC Energy Regulator inspector drove to an oil and gas site in the northeast part of the province. The inspection was one of more than two dozen stops for the compliance and enforcement officer that […]

This investigation is a collaboration between The Narwhal and Investigative Journalism Foundation. Between 2017 and 2023, BC Energy Regulator officials documented thousands of apparent environmental infractions at oil and gas facilities only to conclude the sites were compliant, according to internal government documents. In more than 1,000 instances, inspectors documented a series of apparent environmental […]

The size, number, and environmental impact of oilsands tailings spills have been significantly underreported, according to new research. A study published in the Journal of Environmental Monitoring and Assessment compares information on reported bitumen tailings spills from the Alberta Energy Regulator’s (AER) public database with documents from the AER released through freedom of information requests. […]