Cash-strapped farming Alberta ‘can’t wring money’ from struggling oil and gas firms, premier says

Premier Jason Kenney urged rural municipalities to work with a range to assistance struggling oil and gas companies Tuesday, adding they can’t get “money from a stone.”

He finished a comments following a consult that pronounced a oil and gas zone owes $173 million in delinquent taxes to farming municipalities — some-more than double given a identical report was finished final spring.

• Unpaid taxes from oil and gas companies have some-more than doubled to $173M in farming Alberta

Speaking to reporters Tuesday, Kenney said a zone has seen a few bankruptcies in a past year while other companies are hardly unresolved on.

“You can’t wring income from a stone,” Kenney said, suggesting that could be a box for a series of smaller healthy producers who are carrying trouble right now.

“The best solution, in a view, is to emanate a destiny for those companies that are struggling.“

Rural Municipalities Alberta (RMA) distributed a consult of a members Monday that showed a volume of delinquent taxes from oil and gas companies had grown by 114 per cent since a similar consult final March.

Years of low oil prices have left many tiny producers in apocalyptic straits but farming communities contend those delinquent taxes are withdrawal poignant holes in their budgets.

The RMA said legislative gaps make it formidable to redeem mislaid taxes from appetite companies. When an oil and gas organisation goes bust, municipalities arrange subsequent regulators as creditors, a organisation said.

Al Kemmere, boss of a RMA, told CBC News Tuesday he will accommodate with a provincial apportion of metropolitan affairs subsequent month to plead a situation.

Asked about a premier’s comments, Kemmere concluded there needs to be contention about solutions, though cautioned farming municipalities usually have so most coherence underneath a Municipal Government Act.

“We are also in a really singular range of what we can do, too, since [while] other levels of supervision can … build a necessity into their budget, we cannot,” Kemmere said.

• The flourishing problem of oil and gas companies not profitable taxes or landowners

“That boundary us again on what we can do and how we can find solutions. We possibly change a bill each year or we are in disregard of a possess act.”

Kenney pronounced farming municipalities have a authorised ability to take movement when taxes go unpaid.

But Kemmere confirmed they don’t have that management other than by a polite courts — something he pronounced could be “really messy” and puts risk on taxpayers.

On Tuesday, Kenney was asked how a range would find a change between a farming municipalities and a industry. He pronounced he didn’t perspective them as competing priorities but competing realities. 

• ‘We were blindsided’: Energy companies owe one Alberta county millions in delinquent taxes

“On a one part, the municipalities need a income and they have each right to consider it and and to find to collect it — they have a authorised right to collect it,” Kenney said. 

“But for companies that are on a verge of bankruptcy, they have no money and really small in a approach of assets. There’s not a lot to go after.

“So we would only contend with a municipalities, we know, work with us to try to emanate a best conditions to spin that mercantile conditions around.“

The attention is seeking reforms to how taxes are assessed on oil and gas companies.

Properties are assessed by a provincial government, that evaluates them on deputy cost and not on marketplace value, Ben Brunnen, clamp boss of a Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, pronounced Monday.

“What we’re saying is a need to refurbish a approach a resources are valued inside municipalities,” he told CBC News.

“If we do that, we’ll find a approach for companies to afterwards … perhaps deposit some-more since a economics are improved over a prolonged tenure and a attention will come out stronger.”

On Monday, Ponoka County Reeve Paul McLauchlin said about 40 per cent of delinquent taxes are from exceedingly unsettled companies in an attention tough and widely strike by reduce apparatus prices. The rest of a shortfall is from companies that continue to work though don’t pay.

“My personal opinion is that this is a taxation revolt,” McLauchlin told Canadian Press. “They are regulating this as a push to diminution their comment and change those costs.”

A organisation endangered about a delinquent taxes, a Alberta Liabilities Disclosure Project, is formulation a criticism outward a McDougall Centre in downtown Calgary on Wednesday.

Article source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/kenney-oil-and-gas-taxes-1.5435254?cmp=rss