Drained Away: Oil Lost from First Nations Reserves

Date: Friday, Jan. 13
Time: 3 pm
Location: Arts 211

This event is free and open to the public. 

About this event

University of Alberta applied microeconomist Dr. Laurel Wheeler (PhD) will be speaking on campus as part of the Economics Speaker Series. Wheeler and her team's research presents evidence that oil has been drained away from First Nations reserves in Alberta and Saskatchewan by wells drilled adjacent to the reserve. For decades, levels of production from wells on and near First Nations reserves coincided until diverging in the mid-1980s.

Between 1985 and 2005, production from off-reserve wells dominated production from on-reserve wells. Wheeler finds that this divergence is, in part, driven by wells drilled close enough to the reserve border to drain subsurface common pool resources from beneath the First Nations reserves.

Using a panel of well-level production data, we plot oil production by distance to the border, and Wheeler and her team observed a discontinuous increase in cumulative and average monthly production from wells drilled off reserve but within 400 meters of the reserve border. This drainage represents not only inequitable production of oil but also an unrecoverable loss of resources for First Nations communities.

The event is jointly sponsored in part by the Role Model Speaker fund of the College of Arts and Science.

Info: economics.dept@usask.ca

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