Merci, Monsieur le President. It's time for another statement on the millions of dollars of preventable liabilities our government has taken on from our mismanagement of the Cameron Hills gas field once owned by Strategic Oil and Gas. Production stopped in February 2011, and it finally went into receivership in 2020. We accepted this site under the Devolution Agreement without full financial security and without an approved closure plan. Nothing was done to prevent the site from becoming a public liability. The final revisions to the fourth version of the closure and reclamation plan were supposed to be submitted in April 2021 and that still hasn't happened.
November 2022 was the last report from the court-appointed receiver. It shows that GNWT and the receiver have been trying to sell the property since July 2021. In July 2022, a request for proposal was issued for abandonment of some of the wells on site by the receiver. This is to comply with an order issued by the Office of the Regulator of Oil and Gas in July 2019. The first batch of 24 wells is to be properly abandoned by March 31, 2023 - just a matter of a few weeks away, Mr. Speaker - and the rest of the wells by 2026.
Environmental Liability Management Incorporated of Calgary has been selected to do this work and has negotiated some sort of an abandonment agreement. A land use permit for this work was issued in January of this year. It looks like the work may have started because there is a shiny new sign on the access road south of the border when I drove by in late January. It's also not clear whether a proper closure plan will ever be completed for the property and how the current abandonment work relates to that uncompleted plan. It looks like all the work has gone to a southern company and that none of that spending is taking place in the NWT to benefit our so-called "remediation economy." The last report says GNWT payments to the receiver have been about $3.9 million and all of the money held as financial security has been used up so all additional costs will be covered by taxpayers.
We also learned in the review of the 2021-2022 public accounts that $20 million has been added to GNWT's liabilities to cover some of the costs for Cameron Hills. It is not clear how much more taxpayers will have to pay out to remediate this site. Needless to say, Mr. Speaker, there are a lot of questions about what is going on with the Cameron Hills field, and why nothing has been done to prevent this from happening again and again. I'll ask the Minister of Lands for those answers later today. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
