Foothills

About Foothills

For nearly 70 years, Shell operated the Foothills assets in Alberta, which included high quality operating gas wells, pipelines, and gas processing plants with long-term development potential. These assets were a cornerstone of Shell’s upstream business in Canada for decades but were no longer a strategic fit when Shell’s global investment focus shifted in 2019.

The Foothills Assets, however, are an excellent fit for Pieridae, an experienced Canadian operator who is well positioned to take these assets to the next phase of their development.

These assets consist of long-life fields, low decline production, with high liquids and sulphur yields and align well with Pieridae’s existing central Alberta properties, providing further consolidation of the productive Alberta and British Columbia conventional foothills natural gas pools which form the core of their portfolio. More information on Pieridae can be found on their website at www.pieridaeenergy.com.

Through the commercial terms of the sale, Shell has contractually retained liability for the ongoing management and remediation of specific environmental impacts in, around and under the Waterton and Jumping Pound gas plants, resulting from the operation of these two gas plants, until regulatory closure is achieved.

Since the sale closed, Shell has remained the licensee of record, and Pieridae has owned and operated the Foothills Assets while the companies have sought approval from the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) to transfer the licences and environmental approvals for the Assets to Pieridae (see application history). Both Shell and Pieridae remain focused on achieving a successful transfer that is in the best interest of the community.

Anyone who is interested in receiving more information can submit a request to FoothillsQandA@shell.com and will be added to the Public Notice of Application at the time of any future submission.

Application History

Contractually, Shell has retained certain environmental liabilities associated with the management and remediation of specific environmental impacts at the Waterton and Jumping Pound gas plants. This contractual obligation means that Shell will continue to be directly responsible and accountable for ongoing groundwater monitoring and reporting regarding these specific environmental impacts.

In our first application, submitted in November and December of 2019, Shell attempted to mirror this separation of environmental responsibility by proposing a split licence transfer application for the Jumping Pound and Waterton gas plants. Ultimately, this application was not successful due to concerns that it would create uncertainty in the administration and enforcement of the approvals. As Shell had requested that the transfer application be considered as a single package, all components of the licence transfer application (Split Applications and Field Applications) were therefore denied.

Taking the feedback from the 2020 application into account, on January 4, 2021, Shell submitted a new application to the AER to transfer the licences and approvals for the Foothills Assets to Pieridae. The AER advised Shell and Pieridae in May 2021 that the application would be sent to a public hearing.

On July 20, 2021, at Shell’s request, the AER hearing panel paused the Foothills Asset licence transfer application in a Notice of Adjournment. Shell and Pieridae sought an extension of the adjournment on September 28, 2021. The AER granted the adjournment extension and asked Shell and Pieridae to provide an update to the hearing panel by January 31, 2022.

On December 1, 2021, the AER released new guidance documents as part of its revised Liability Management Framework. After reviewing these documents, Shell and Pieridae jointly decided to withdraw the licence transfer application to understand the new regulatory framework.

Any future applications related to the Foothills Assets will be assessed in accordance with these new regulatory requirements.

Shell and Pieridae are committed to keeping interested parties informed on future updates.

Anyone who is interested in receiving more information can submit a request to FoothillsQandA@shell.com and will be added to the Public Notice of Application at the time of any future submission.

Contacts