By: Nigel Bankes, Amy Matychuk, and David Rennie

PDF Version: Announcing a New Resource for the Letter Decisions of the Alberta Energy Regulator

Decisions Commented On: The Participatory/Procedural Decisions of the AER

Several years ago now, ABlawg published a series of posts that were critical of the failure of the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) and its predecessor the Energy Resources Conservation Board to publish its letter decisions in a systematic way: see here, here and here. Whether in response to that criticism, or for its own good reasons, the AER began posting what it refers to as participatory/procedural decisions (presumably a sub-set of a broader category of letter decisions) in the fall of 2015. When this venture began, the decisions were simply listed with no attached descriptor whatsoever. Now the AER does provide a brief description of the matter at hand but it is still a laborious task to click and retrieve each document and assess its significance.

Having asked the AER to provide this information it accordingly seemed appropriate to try and present it in a more usable and accessible form. Hence this project. The project has three steps. Step one is to provide a digest of each decision. Given the number of these decisions (already over 170) we have not attempted to synthesise or précis these decisions, rather the exercise has been more of a cut-and-paste job hewing closely to the AER’s actual text. We have added key words which are listed below. There is no additional commentary. The result of that exercise has been collated into a PDF document which is available here and is fully searchable. Step two will be to present this information as a set of web-pages. That is a work in progress. Step three will be to write what we anticipate will become a short annual survey of these decisions, assessing trends and perhaps highlighting some of the more important decisions. That too is a work in progress. It goes without saying that while step one is complete until the end of January 2017 we also aim to populate it with new decisions from time to time.

David Rennie (JD 2017) began this work as a summer student in 2016 preparing digests of the first 85 decisions and Amy Matychuk (JD 2018), also a summer student in 2016, continued the work for the latter part of the summer and through the fall. Nigel Bankes provided direction and supervision.

We hope that readers of ABlawg and other researchers will find this tool useful and we welcome your feedback, either by way of a comment on this post or to ndbankes@ucalgary.ca

Alphabetical List of Key Words

abandonment

abandonment costs

Aboriginal Consultation Office

Aboriginal rights

administrative penalty

advance of funds

agenda

agricultural land

air quality

alternative dispute resolution

amendment application

animal habitat

appealable decision

application scope

bias

CAPL operating procedure

common ownership

confidentiality

confidentiality application

conservation

constitutional questions

consultation

consultation area

costs

cross-examination

decision definition

directly and adversely affected

disclosure

drainage

dust

earthquake

eligible person

emergency planning zone

emissions

environmental impact assessment

environmental protection order

equipment spacing

erosion

evidence

expert evidence

filing deadline

filing extension

First Nations/Métis

flaring

gas injection

gas over bitumen

gas storage

groundwater

health

hearing attendance

hearing date

hearing timing

holding

horses

industry vs. industry

information request

injection well

irreparable harm

joint ownership

joint review panel

jurisdiction

land use

landowner

LARP

late filing

licence amendment

licence extension

licence transfer

light

LNG facilities

maps

MDR report

mineral rights

mitigation

municipality

noise

non-routine application

non-routine status

notice of hearing

observation well

odours

oil sands exploration

oral submissions

participation scope

pilot project

pipeline

pipeline diameter

pollution

pool name

pooling order

pre-hearing meeting

prescribed decision

privilege

procedural direction

procedural fairness

procedural items

project timeline

property values

public record

reclamation

reclamation certificate

reconsideration request

records

recusal request

regulatory appeal

regulatory requirements

removal application

renewal application

request for stay

request to participate

reservoir integrity

reservoir pressure

resolution agreement

right to appeal

safety

schedule

scope of appeal

setbacks

settlement

site visit

sound attenuation equipment

surface rights

technical competency

traditional knowledge

traditional lands

traffic

trapping

treaty rights

trespass

undue harm

unmarked graves

venting

waste disposal

wastewater disposal

water

water quality

wetlands

wildlife

without prejudice

written submissions

This post may be cited as: Nigel Bankes, Amy Matychuk, & David Rennie “Announcing a New Resource for the Letter Decisions of the Alberta Energy Regulator” (8 February, 2017), online: ABlawg, https://ablawg.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Blog_NB_etal_AER_digest.pdf

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