The Globe and Mail reports in its Tuesday edition that documents reviewed by Reuters reveal that Canada's environmental regulator removed a natural gas flaring limit due to pressure from the provincial government and oil companies.
A Reuters dispatch to The Globe reports that Alberta's dismantling of its 200-year-old flaring limit after companies blew through the limit two years in a row, with no objections from Ottawa, is an example of the challenges Canada faces in reconciling its environmental commitments with a renewed focus on economic growth.
The documents show the Alberta Energy Regulator sent letters to 20 companies in the spring of 2024 threatening to enforce flaring limits if the operators did not prepare and implement plans for lowering their flaring volumes. But the plans that operators, including Murphy Oil and Tamarack Valley Energy, submitted were unenforced. By June, 2025, the AER quietly did away with flaring limits in response to directives from Alberta government officials. In the lead-up to that decision, the government urged the regulator to take a "softer" tone in its communication with offending companies, taking a "humble and collaborative" approach, previously unreported e-mail records show.
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