A provincial program that will fund the closure of inactive oil and gas well aims to boost the sector, create jobs and help the environment.
Minister of Energy and Resources, Bronwyn Eyre says $400-million from the federal government’s COVID-19 Economic Response Plan will be funded over several phases to close the wells.
The Accelerated Site Closure Program will be run in partnership with the Saskatchewan Research Council and will prioritize Saskatchewan-based service companies.
Eyre says the work will create around 21-hundred full-time equivalent jobs and up to 8-thousand inactive wells that have reached the end of their life cycle will be closed.
She considers it a substantial amount of environmentally important work in a short period of time.
Eyre says the oil and gas sector has been challenged because of the OPEC price war and now with the pandemic, there has been less travel, so less demand for gas.