The Intellog Blog

Recently reported on this blog was the decision of the Information and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC) to exercise his right under the FOIPPA to extend the deadline for the completion of his investigation by a month. Subsequently, in a letter dated 2010-08-11, Commissioner Frank Work Q.C. states “I am extending the time for completion of this review by 9 months beyond the 90-day time period set out in the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act . The anticipated date completion of this review is now June 10, 2011.” Nine months. Nine months?

The first step in the process is for the Commissioner to “determine whether an inquiry is warranted” and goes on to say his “decision as to whether this office will conduct an inquiry will be communicated to the parties. If I decide not to conduct an inquiry, I will provide reasons.” So while on the face of it, the lengthy extension seems to support a thorough investigation of the matter, it’s still within the purview of the Commissioner to proceed with the formal inquiry only if he feels there is merit. One would presume a decision in this latter regard would come fairly quickly.

The inquiry process is described in detail in the Commissioner’s letter and enclosures. Of particular note is the description of “Affected Parties” which are “individuals or other organizations that could be affected by the decision made in the inquiry.” This seems to be an opportunity for those with an interest in the outcome of this process to provide input to the inquiry. By all means, if you feel you would benefit from a positive outcome — that is, one where the General Well Data File were freely available to all — please contact the Commissioner and express your interest in participating in the inquiry. Click the link above, or the Adobe Reader® logo at the bottom right, for a complete copy of the most recent letter and enclosures.

A complete history of this process has been posted here. Thank you very much for your continued interest and support, and please feel free to leave comments and questions below or contact us.

Previously in this series of posts, it was reported that the Information and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC) for Alberta (Mr. Frank Work, Q.C.) had established a deadline of 2010-08-11 “to investigate and settle this matter“. The matter in question being Intellog’s request to waive fees associated with the General Well Data File which is maintained by the ERCB on behalf of the citizens of Alberta. Recently, another letter was received from Mr. Work to say he had been advised that “additional time is required to conclude the mediation/investigation“, and exercised his right under the Act to extend the deadline by a month, to 2010-09-10.

This is a curious turn of events given that on 2010-07-02, nearly one month prior to the most recent letter, Portfolio Officer Hendy stated “I have completed my review and am writing to share my findings with you.” The extension of the deadline is interpreted as a positive development as it an opportunity to provide further input to the Commissioner’s investigation. The full text of the letter extending the deadline can be found here or by clicking the Adobe Reader® logo at the bottom right. Thank you very much for your continued interest and support, and please feel free to leave comments and questions below or contact us.

In the post But They Didn’t Even Call? a commitment was made to file a Request for Inquiry with the Office of Information and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC). This commitment has now been made good, and the document can be found here, or by clicking the Adobe Reader® logo, bottom right. Please feel free to contribute your thoughts and comments elow, or contact us. Thank you very much for your interest and support.

Back in May of this year, a post to this blog described an effort to obtain support for free well data from various oil & gas industry associations. To date, all of these letters have gone unanswered, which is not all that surprising given that Intellog in not a constituent member of any of these organizations. However, it’s still disappointing that none of them felt it was necessary to reply, even if it was to say they were not interested.

Undeterred, the decision has been taken to go directly after broad support with a series of letters written directly to industry participants. Copies of the first 25 letters in this regard can be found here, or by clicking the Adobe Reader® logo at the bottom right. The general selection criteria for the recipients was to identify larger organizations on the producer side, along with higher profile service companies with which they do business. Ultimately, all of these companies stand to directly benefit from this initiative. Shared well identification information enabled by free well data will make transferring data between these industry participants dramatically easier and much more efficient.

As additional batches of recipients are identified, similar letters will go out to them, and these will be documented in the comments below. Also, replies received in response to these letters will be posted as well. Comments or questions are welcome, or if you prefer, you can get directly in contact with us. We appreciate and highly value your support!

When a previous post in this series reported Portfolio Officer Hendy having declined Intellog’s offer for more information, it was assumed that was for the time being — surely a meeting would be eventually be set up, and Intellog would be provided the opportunity to make our case. It was a shock, therefore, when the final report was received, in which Ms. Hendy provides the findings of her review. To save you the trouble, skip to page seven where she states; “the ERCB correctly applied section 29 of the FOIP Act to your request for access to the General Well Data File and monthly updates to this file” and goes on to say “the ERCB was correct in stating section 93(1) does not apply to your request for access to records/information as the fees you requested waived were not fees for services relating to your access request.“

So it would appear the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FOIPPA) has a hole you could drive an oil sands dump truck through. For any data an agency of government does not want to make public, they simply need to publish a prohibitively high price for it. They can then invoke 29(1)(a.1) of the Act which states “[t]he head of a public body may refuse to disclose to an applicant information…that is available for purchase by the public.” Don’t want to disclose the budget for the next fiscal year? Simply have the Minister of Finance declare it’s available for purchase for $1,000,000 and they don’t have to.

Of course, the latter is ridiculous — the public outcry would simply be overwhelming. But once you’ve crossed that threshold, then what amount for this data is reasonable? $750,000? $500,000? Or how about $1? Or even $0.01? Similarly, if it is unreasonable to charge for data in which the public has a deep and abiding interest, then what is the mechanism by which it’s determined which data should be free, and which data should have a price?

Fortunately, Ms. Hendy concludes her report by outlining the procedure by which a formal hearing can be requested. That is precisely what Intellog intends to do next, and progress will be reported on this blog. The complete text of Ms. Hendy’s report can be obtained here or by clicking the Adobe Reader® logo at the bottom right. Thanks very much for your continued interest and support, and please feel free to leave comments and questions below or contact us.

A previous post in this series documented a Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FOIPPA) request filed with the Energy Resources Conservation Board (ERCB) to obtain revenue and expense information associated with the General Well Data File. To the credit of the ERCB (in the person of Ms. Reta McPhail), they provided a prompt and fairly informative response, particularly with respect to revenues associated with the File. The copy of the letter from Ms. McPhail can be found here, or by clicking the Adobe Reader® logo, bottom right.

What virtually leaps off the page is the fact that in fiscal years 2007/08, 2008/09 and 2009/10, no revenue — not one penny — has been generated by the the Initial Fee/Single issue fee — the $66,491 noted in previous posts. As a result, one cannot help but conclude that the sole remaining impact of this fee is to sustain the status quo, and is therefore anti-competitive in nature. Those with the wherewithal to pay have already done so — probably a very long time ago — and those who would otherwise compete with entrenched interests are marginalized by this seemingly pointless fee.

With respect to the Monthly, Quarterly and Annual fees, these generated a total of $93,217.00, $93,217.00 and $128,391.00 in fiscal years 2007/08, 2008/09 and 2009/10 respectively. Compared to the estimated operating budget of the ERCB overall — approximately $162 million, $172 million and $171 million during the same periods*, it’s impossible to imagine that complete elimination of fees associated with the General Well Data File would have any conceivable impact on the operations of the ERCB. At seven one hundredths of one percent (0.07%), they’re virtually a rounding error.

With respect to the expenses associated with the generation of these revenues, Ms. McPhail states “the ERCB does not track actual expenses at the individual product levels [and f]ees charged by the ERCB…are based generally on the cost recovery principle.” In the absence of more detailed information, it therefore appears logical to make the comparison noted immediately above.

Reader comments comments are welcome and encouraged and thank you very much for your ongoing support.

*Source: ERCB Business Plan 2007-10

It was previously reported that Information and Privacy Commissioner Frank Work, Q.C. had sent a letter to ERCB Chairman Dan McFadyen. This letter informed Chairman McFadyen that Intellog has requested a review of previous ERCB decisions with respect to access to the General Well Data File. The letter went on to say Ms. Eileen Hendy had been assigned as the Portfolio Officer for the file and provided a detailed description of the review process.

More recently, a letter was received directly from Ms. Hendy, wherein she asked Intellog to confirm the basis of our request. A copy of the letter can be found here, or by clicking on the Adobe Reader icon bottom right. Via email to Ms. Hendy, the points noted in the letter were confirmed to be correct. Also, an offer was made to provide additional supplementary information and/or meet with Ms. Hendy for a more detailed discussion. Via email, Ms. Hendy declined this offer for the time being, given that she already had access to sufficient material already provided to the OIPC.

Reader comments comments are welcome and encouraged and thank you very much for your ongoing support.

In a previous post to this blog reported that Intellog’s request for access to the General Well Data File had been referred to Mr. Frank Work, Q.C., the Information and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC) for the Province of Alberta. Late last week, the Commissioner’s response was received in the form of a copy of a letter to ERCB Chairman McFadyen. In what seems like a productive step, Commissioner Work has appointed Eileen Hendy, a FOIP Portfolio Officer “to investigate and try to settle this matter” and set an interim deadline of 2010-08-11. He also provided a copy of the Procedures for Review, which describes the review process in detail. The entire text of all documents can be found here, or by clicking the Adobe Reader® logo at the bottom right.

It’s hard to argue with the logic of this approach. Since this process began, well over two years ago, Intellog has always sought an opportunity to meet with the ERCB to potentially work out an arrangement where the business imperatives of both organizations could be addressed. It seems like it has taken a long time, but it looks like the meeting will finally happen. Better still, an impartial mediator will be present, which should a positive impact on the outcome. Also, the Procedures for Review document notes that”[i]f the matter is not settled at mediation, the applicant may ask to proceed to an inquiry.” So it appears that there are still a number of layers of process which can be utilized to get the Well Data File into the public domain.

Of course, please feel free to provide comments below, and thank you for your ongoing interest and support.

In a previous post, it was noted that Intellog had filed a second FOIPPA request with the ERCB, this time to obtain revenue and expense information related to the General Well Data File. They have provided a formal response, in which they state they have deposited the cheque, and will work up an estimate for retrieving the requested information. Once that’s done, Intellog can decide whether to proceed with the request or not. They also committed to rendering a decision on the request by no later than 2010-06-10. This all seems to be in precise compliance with the Act, and therefore more-or-less as expected.

In comparison with their response to our first FOIPPA request, the most recent turn of events is seen as progress. In the case of the first request, they declined to even deposit the cheque, presumably because they felt there was zero possibility of them handing over the Well File. There is therefore cause for optimism, with the only potential hiccup being the amount of the estimate they provide for retrieving the records. The entire text of their letter can be found here, or by clicking the Adobe Reader logo, bottom right. You are welcome and encouraged to comment, and thanks for your interest and support.

Regular reader of this series of posts have suggested engaging with various industry associations to help build broad-based support for Intellog’s effforts with respect to the ERCB’s General Well Data File. A standard letter has been drafted and sent to;

• David Collyer, President, Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP)
• Don Herring, President, Canadian Association of Oilwell Drilling Contractors (CAODC)
• Gary Leach, Executive Director, Small Explorers and Producers Association (SEPAC)
• Mike Dawson, President, Canadian Society for Unconventional Gas (CSUG)
• Patrick Murphy, President, Canadian Association of Drilling Engineers (CADE)
• Roger Soucy, President & CEO, Petroleum Services Association of Canada (PSAC)
• Soheil Asgarpour, President, Petroleum Technology Alliance Canada (PTAC)

Copies of the letters can be found here, as well as by clicking the Adobe Reader logo, bottom right. Responses received will be described in future posts. If there are other associations which should also be contacted, please leave a comment below, or alternatively contact us directly. Other comments are also welcome and encouraged. Thank you very much for your ongoing support of these efforts.