Following the general election on May 5, 2015, Alberta's new
government moved swiftly to strike a panel (the
"Panel") to review Alberta's oil and
gas royalty framework. The Panel's mandate was to produce a
report (the "Report") of recommended
changes to the existing framework. In the Report, the Panel made
four overarching recommendations. These recommendations were
to:
- establish guiding principles and design criteria for
Alberta's royalty framework;
- modernize Alberta's royalty framework for crude oil,
liquids and natural gas;
- enhance the royalty process for the oil sands; and
- seize opportunities for value-added processing.
With respect to the first two recommendations, the Panel found
that Alberta's existing royalties were comparable with those in
international jurisdictions; however, certain issues should be
addressed for crude oil, liquids and natural gas. The Panel
therefore proposed a new modernized Alberta royalty framework (the
"New Framework").
