Originally published on Nov. 6, 2025 at The Narwhal. Read the full story here.

In September 2024, the Alberta Energy Regulator approved the transfer of hundreds of oil and gas wells and related facilities to MAGA Energy, short for Make Alberta Great Again, despite the company’s dire financial situation — and regulations meant to block struggling companies from taking over new sites. 

The company’s financial troubles are documented in a Jan. 24, 2025, email obtained by The Narwhal and sent by MAGA Energy’s vice-president of operations, Mark Ross, to a landowner.

MAGA has been in “survival mode over the last 14 months,” Ross said in the email, adding the company “has not been able to pay landowners and other vendors for many months.”

“MAGA is in difficult times right now,” he wrote, noting another company, Tidewater Midstream, which he said has processed 90 per cent of MAGA’s natural gas and oil, had shut their facilities in Acheson, Alta., in late 2023. “Our revenues have been chopped by 90 per cent as a result.” MAGA Energy declined to answer detailed questions from The Narwhal, including about the contents of the January 2025 email, and did not confirm or deny that it sent the email.

Nine months after MAGA lost its processor — and according to the email, most of its revenue — the regulator approved MAGA Energy’s takeover of 170 oil and gas wells, 30 related facilities and 47 pipeline licences from another company, Journey Energy.

The email, shared with The Narwhal by another disgruntled landowner and confirmed with the original recipient (who did not want to be identified) — raises serious questions about the regulator’s ability to prevent unstable companies from taking over more oil and gas wells. 

When financially struggling companies take over old wells, they may not be able — or may choose not — to pay landowners land lease payments, cover cleanup costs or pay municipal taxes. MAGA’s email outlining its financial struggles was in response to the landowner reaching out about missing land lease payments they claimed were owed.

In the email, Ross said the company expected to be on solid footing by the middle of 2025 and then directed the landowner to a government tribunal that uses tax dollars to reimburse landowners when oil and companies don’t pay their leases. 

“In the meantime,” he wrote. “I have advised landowners to contact the provincial government’s Land and Property Rights Tribunal where you can put in a claim for the outstanding rental payments.”

“The government will then ensure that they get paid by MAGA in due course as they have many ways of ensuring that the funds will be recovered by MAGA.”

Data shows the government fails to collect those funds more than 99 per cent of the time, and, instead, taxpayers foot the bill.

Meanwhile, MAGA, which has also dipped its toes into Bitcoin mining, has missed hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments to landowners, according to an Alberta government tribunal.

“I don’t know how many companies are like MAGA — they’re not the only ones, they can’t be,” Jennifer Stephenson, a landowner with four MAGA wells on her property, previously told The Narwhal.

“We’ll get paid through the government, but that gets to be a moot point.” Stephenson said of the government using tax dollars to pay landowners. “I’m paying myself.”

READ THE FULL STORY AT THE NARWHAL.