Environmental, Indigenous and Natural Resources Blog

On April 5, 2017, an Expert Panel established by the Minister of Environment and Climate Change (the “Panel”) released its report, Building Common Ground - A New Vision for Impact Assessment in Canada, The Final Report of the Expert Panel for the Review of Environmental Assessment Processes (the “Report”). Our post of June 26, 2016 discussed the Federal ...

Lewis Manning and Bernadita Tamura-O'Connor, Partners at Lawson Lundell LLP, have written a Q&A guide to oil and gas regulation in Canada. The Q&A provides a high level overview of the domestic oil and gas sector, rights to oil and gas, health, safety, and the environment, sale and trade in oil and gas, tax and enforcement of regulation. It covers transfer of rights; ...

When will the replacement of operator provisions in the 2007 CAPL Operating Procedure (“Paragraph 2.02”) be enforced against a party in receivership in the context of a court approved sale of the underlying oil and gas properties? This question was recently considered by Justice Macleod in Bank of Montreal v. Bumper Development Corporation Ltd., 2016 ABQB 363 ...

The AER has issued Bulletin 2016-21  to respond to the industry's outcry to Bulletin 2016-16 which imposed a 2.0 LMR minimum threshold for eligibility to take transfers of AER-licensed assets.  Bulletin 2016-16 was in response to the Alberta Court of Queen's Bench decision in Redwater Energy Corporation (Re), 2016 ABQB 278, which we previously commented on.

This Bulletin ...

Can you ever do indirectly that which you cannot do directly? The answer appears to be yes, in certain circumstances according to the Saskatchewan Court of Queen's Bench decision in Northrock Resources v ExxonMobil Canada Energy, 2016 SKQB 188.  This case considers this issue in the context of rights of first refusal ("ROFR") when dealing with oil and gas transactions.

Among ...

On June 20, 2016 the Government of Canada announced its review of several environmental and regulatory processes. The review will focus on three areas:

• the federal Environmental Assessment process, which was revised in 2012 by the Conservative government,

• modernization of the National Energy Board, and

• the federal Fisheries Act and Navigation Protection Act, both of ...

In response to the Alberta Court of Queen's Bench decision in Redwater Energy Corporation (Re), 2016 ABQB 278, the Alberta Energy Regulator ("AER") has issued Bulletin 2016-16 (the "Bulletin") to minimize the risk to Albertans.

In Redwater the Court held that a trustee in bankruptcy has the right to disclaim unproductive oil and gas assets, including those subject to ...

Update: On June 9, 2016, the Supreme Court of Canada agreed to hear an appeal from Yukon Court of Appeal’s Peel watershed decision.  Click here to read our earlier blog post on the Court of Appeal’s decision handed down November 4, 2015.

On April 8, 2016, the Alberta Energy Regulator (“AER”) sent a sombre reminder to licensees and their directors and officers, of their corporate responsibilities when ceasing operations because of insolvency or for any other reason. Bulletin 2016-10 reinforced the need for compliance with all AER requirements when ceasing operations. Among several other ...

Late last week, the Government of Canada released a proposed methodology for estimating upstream GHG emissions from proposed oil and gas projects undergoing federal environmental assessment. This comes on the heels of the Government’s announcement in late January of its new guiding principles for project review, one of which included assessment of “direct and ...