Taxpayers missing out on $45M a year in surface rights fees, study says – Calgary Herald

January 18, 2016

Taxpayers are out an estimated $45 million a year because the former Tory regime balked at enacting a law that would have meant most of the fees paid by oil and gas companies for access to public lands went into government coffers instead of private pockets, according to a new study.

The report by the Alberta Land Institute found that about half the money the province has been forgoing by not proclaiming a 1999 bill, which would have limited so-called “cowboy welfare” or surface rights payments by the energy industry, is going instead to a tiny minority of those who hold grazing leases.

“The top two per cent of leases collect as much as 50 per cent of the total compensation paid to leaseholders,” the study said.

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