Alberta landowners owed overdue lease payments from Oil and Gas Companies
As a photojournalist on assignment for The Narwhal in September 2025, I spent 48 hours driving through rural Alberta with an investigative reporter speaking with landowners about overdue leases owed to them by delinquent oil and gas companies — notably MAGA Energy, whose name stands for “Make Alberta Great Again." The provincial government has stepped in to pay millions of dollars in leases on their behalf, much to the chagrin of taxpayers. The trip culminated in a heated town hall, where landowners expressed their grievances to the Alberta energy minister’s chief of staff about the province’s proposed Mature Asset Strategy. Landowners claimed the province was breaking its promise to not use taxpayer money to clean up abandoned oil wells — despite having already used it to pay landowners.
Dennis Byrne at his home in Warburg, Alberta, about an hour outside Edmonton. He is one of dozens of landowners across the province who received rent payments from oil and gas companies leasing their property to access oil; but now, the checks have stopped coming. The province has stepped in to pay overdue rent on behalf of the oil and gas companies, but only a fraction has been repaid.
Jennifer Stephenson of Brazeau County, Alberta, has four inactive wells on her property.
A pumpjack on Jennifer Stephenson's property in Brazeau County, Alberta. Her family has and continues to benefit from oil and gas, but is among many others across the province who have stopped receiving payments from MAGA Energy.
The oil wells on Dennis Byrne’s property have been there since the early 1980s. He and his wife Barb don’t want to spend their twilight years fighting for money from MAGA Energy.
