Peter Guthrie

Oilpatch support for Alberta Premier Danielle Smith's agenda ballooned after she won her party's leadership and put the so-called RStar program — a plan to give tax breaks to energy companies for fulfilling cleanup work they are already obliged to do — high on the government agenda.

Alberta's United Conservative Party government is facing growing criticism for a plan to give oil companies a royalty credit for cleaning up their old wells.

The Alberta government is refusing to release information on toxic contaminants in snowpacks downwind from mountaintop removal coal mines. 

Alberta's new energy minister has promised to maintain an order protecting the Rocky Mountains in the province from coal development, for now.

New Alberta government research has found windblown dust from mountaintop removal coal mines has polluted a pristine alpine lake to the point where its waters are as contaminated as lakes downwind from the oilsands.

Critics fear Alberta's new United Conservative premier is preparing to bring in a program that would use billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded royalty breaks to subsidize energy companies to fulfil their legal duty and clean up old wells.

Premier Jason Kenney threw Alberta politics into a tailspin on Wednesday when he narrowly won a United Conservative Party leadership review vote only to announce he was quitting the top job anyway.