The BC Energy Regulator ensures that inactive energy resource activity sites in British Columbia are cleaned up and restored in a timely and thorough manner, with costs covered by industry rather than taxpayers. Through financial oversight, clear restoration timelines, and an industry-funded mechanism for orphan sites, the BCER supports environmental recovery while protecting the public interest.

Energy resource activity delivers important benefits to British Columbia, supporting jobs, communities and provincial revenues. Responsible development includes planning for how sites are safely closed and restored once activity ends.

As part of the BCER’s commitment to environmental stewardship across the resource development lifecycle, we work to ensure that inactive energy resource activity sites are restored to a healthy, functioning state in a timely and thorough manner once activities end, so that ecosystems and communities can continue to thrive. This means decommissioning all infrastructure, assessing each site to determine whether contamination is present, remediating soil and groundwater if necessary and reclaiming the site, including revegetation of disturbed areas.

This closure and restoration work can involve significant costs, which we are committed to ensuring are fully covered by industry, not the residents of B.C. In this way, environmental stewardship and fiscal accountability go hand in hand: healthy land requires well-funded cleanup, and protecting taxpayers requires making sure industry meets its restoration obligations.

The BC Energy Regulator takes an integrated approach to restoration and liability management to achieve these outcomes. This approach has three core, interconnected components:

1. The Permittee Capability Assessment (PCA) Program, which monitors companies’ financial capacity to meet their restoration obligations and manages risk early;
2. The Dormancy and Shutdown Regulation (DSR), which sets clear timelines for site cleanup and restoration; and
3. The Orphan Site Program, which utilizes industry levies to pay the cost of restoring sites when no responsible operator remains.

1. Permittee Capability Assessment Program: Financial Monitoring & Liability Risk Mitigation at the Operator Level

The PCA program is the BCER’s primary tool for monitoring the financial health of permit holders and uses regulatory tools to support compliance with cleanup and restoration obligations.

Through the PCA, the BCER regularly assesses whether individual companies have the financial capacity to restore their sites. When elevated financial risk is identified, the BCER may require companies to accelerate site closure work or provide additional financial security deposits, reducing the risk that sites become orphaned and helping ensure that restoration remains the responsibility of the individual permit holder.

The PCA uses a standardized, province-wide cost model that estimates the full cost of restoring energy resource activity sites in British Columbia. Using this model, the BCER has estimated the restoration liabilities associated with all energy resource activity sites in the province.

These estimates can be explored in detail, by activity type (wells, facilities, pipelines) in our Data Centre: DataCentre | BC Energy Regulator (BCER).

2. Dormancy & Shutdown Regulation: Timely Cleanup & Restoration

In general, sites are considered dormant after five consecutive years of inactivity.

Once a site becomes dormant, the DSR establishes clear, enforceable timelines for site restoration to its pre-development state. By requiring companies to move dormant sites from decommissioning into assessment and final restoration, the regulation helps prevent accumulation of inactive infrastructure in the province and thus reduces financial liability and potential environmental risk.

This approach supports environmental recovery by returning land to a healthy, functioning pre-disturbance state in a time-bound manner.

3. Orphan Site Program: Restoration in Cases where No Responsible Operator Exists

Orphan sites are wells, facilities, pipelines and associated areas where an oil and gas company has become insolvent or can no longer be located, leaving no responsible operator to carry out required cleanup and restoration work. In these cases, the Orphan Site Program ensures that sites are cleaned up and restored to regulated standards.

Once a site is designated as an orphan, the BC Energy Regulator assumes responsibility for overseeing its cleanup and restoration. Importantly, this work is not paid for by taxpayers, but is funded through the industry-funded Orphan Site Reclamation Fund, which is supported by levies paid by oil and gas companies operating in British Columbia.

By ensuring restoration proceeds when no operator remains, the Orphan Site Program supports environmental protection and land restoration while protecting the public from inheriting unfunded cleanup liabilities.

---