His message for the Alberta Energy Regulator: “Do your damn job – or landowners are going to take action and protect themselves.”
(Edmonton, AB) – After three years of unpaid rent on an active wellsite run by MAGA Energy Inc, an Alberta landowner took action today, tearing up the company’s lease and blockading their access to the wellsite.
Landowner Mark Dorin told media he was pushed to his limit after years of frustration pursuing the company and the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) for solutions: “I’ve followed all the rules. I’ve reported these issues to the companies, I’ve reported them to the regulator. I’ve spent hundreds of hours and tens of thousands of dollars on this. And I’ve gotten absolutely nowhere.”
Dorin emphasized that he followed proper legal procedure in terminating the lease, providing the company with a written legal notice to pay their debts or face consequences. After receiving no payment and no reply after 30 days, Dorin took action.
Accompanied by another landowner this morning, Dorin ripped up his lease at the company’s oilfield in Southwest Edmonton and blockaded their access to the jacks with sawhorses and a large printed sign with a message to the company to “Clean up your mess!”
He emphasized that thousands of Albertans were affected by MAGA Energy’s “lawlessness” and failure to pay its bills, including hundreds of landowners, and the municipalities facing budget shortfalls from the company’s reported $1.2 million in unpaid municipal taxes across the province: “That’s roads, libraries, local services that aren’t funded because a company just refuses to pay what they owe.”
But ultimately, he said, it was the AER’s job to hold companies like MAGA to account when they don’t follow the rules – and they were failing to do that. Dorin pointed to a recent report from the Investigative Journalism Foundation detailing how MAGA Energy was allowed to acquire 191 new well licenses in 2024 and 2025, despite a March 2023 ministerial order authorizing the AER to block the transfer of new well licences to companies with over $20,000 in unpaid municipal taxes.
Dorin called the AER “captured” by the oil and gas industry and blamed them for the growing frustrations among Alberta landowners with wells on their land: “They’ve refused to enforce their own rules. And now we see the results – a complete loss of social license for the industry that built this province, and thousands of landowners across this province that are absolutely fed up with this lawlessness and these double standards.
So my message to the Alberta Regulator is: do your damn job – or landowners are going to use the legal tools at their disposal to take action and protect themselves.”
Dorin also had a blunt message for MAGA Energy before he set up the blockade: “Pay your damn bills, clean up your mess, and get the hell off my land. We are done with you.”
– 30 –
BACKGROUND:
- Across Alberta, there are more than 300,000 wells, 450,000 kilometres of pipeline, and around 40,000 facilities that have yet to be cleaned up after nearly a century of energy development, with cleanup costs estimated to be between $60 billion and $130 billion.
- At the same time, oil and gas companies are increasingly reneging on their municipal tax bills: the Rural Municipalities of Alberta says rural communities are owed $254 million in unpaid taxes from oil and gas companies, many of them still solvent. This is leading to municipalities cutting services, or raising taxes on everyone else to make up the difference.
- MAGA Energy is one of many companies refusing to pay their annual compensation (or rent) to landowners. Landowners are entitled to seek compensation from the Alberta government when companies renege on payments, which means taxpayers ultimately foot the bill. Since 2010, Alberta taxpayers have covered nearly $150 million in unpaid rent to landowners – $30 million in 2024 alone.
MEDIA CONTACT:
Phillip Meintzer, Coalition for Responsible Energy (C4RE)Phillip@ResponsibleEnergyAB.ca, (403) 771-1647