Whereas: As oil and gas assets are retired, oil and gas companies are legally obliged to clean up and remediate the impacted areas and landscapes. The current level of action on climate change is forecast to reduce demand for oil and gas within the next decade. These market changes raise risk as there are potentially accelerating timelines for oil and gas companies to meet their asset retirement obligations.

This risk comes at a time when there is a lack of transparency and clarity on the scale of the sector's liability.1 The current systems are underestimating the oil and gas sector's liabilities2 , raising concerns about the accuracy and transparency of reported closure obligations.

The oil sands tailings ponds are a particularly serious source of oil and gas liability as they represent about half of the total clean up liability in Alberta3 . There is no solution that can yet deliver a proven method to remove these tailings from the landscape, so tailings ponds have grown exponentially since oil sands mining first started4 . The lack of a solution comes even as the industry has made extensive investment in research and technologies to address this growing problem.5

The system failures that allowed toxic discharges from Imperial's Kear1 tailings pond to enter regional waterways and affect downstream communities are a serious problem.6 Yet these problems are a symptom of the big issue being the need to fund the removal of the tailings from the landscape at a time when eroding oil and gas demand could accelerate remediation and closure obligations.

There is a lack of transparency and confidence in the systems that are meant to protect the water, land and downstream communities. A key step to address this problem is to disclose the estimated undiscounted costs to settle the company's AROs, and separately, identify both recognized and unrecognized amounts. These actions will improve the transparency and reporting of Imperial's capacity to fulfill its asset retirement obligations. We respectfully request that shareholders vote FOR this proposal.