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.