The Alberta government is putting an additional $30 million towards reclaiming abandoned well sites, Energy Minister Mel Knight said Wednesday.

Knight said he and his cabinet colleagues believe this idea will achieve two goals: keep people working in the oilpatch and reclaim old well sites.

"All of the parts of this program are about getting Albertans to work," Knight said.

Environment Minister Rob Renner also sees this as an opportunity to speed up the process of well reclamation with a focus on the high priority sites. "More importantly that they spend 40 million this year not 10," he said.

The amount of money announced for well reclamation came as a bit of a surprise to the group that has been doing this kind of work for decades, said David Sandmeyer, a board member of the Orphan Well Association.

He said there's plenty of research and planning that needs to be done before crews can be hired to dig up contaminated soil and cap old wells. "That level of increase in our activity in this fiscal year would be somewhat problematic for us," Sandmeyer said.

There are about 600 abandoned well sites in the province that have been identified as needing reclamation.