SOURCES
Where the numbers come from
- Reserves and production: AER ST98 2026 web tables (2025 production) and the AGS/AER Alberta Petroleum Appraisal 2026 (INF 161, McDaniel & Associates, effective 31 Dec 2023) for proved and proved-plus-probable reserves.
- Mineral resources: AGS information series INF 154 (helium), 155 (vanadium), 156 (critical minerals), 157 (rare earths), 159 and 160 (lithium), AGS Geothermal Atlas (IAM-016), company NI 43-101 disclosures as summarized by AGS.
- Prices and outlooks: World Bank Commodity Markets Outlook (April 2026), USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026, IEA Global Critical Minerals Outlook 2025 and World Energy Outlook 2025, CER Canada's Energy Future 2026, exchange and broker quotes as cited on each profile.
- Tenure and royalty: Metallic and Industrial Minerals Tenure Regulation (AR 265/2022), Metallic and Industrial Minerals Royalty Regulation (AR 350/93), Coal Royalty Regulation, Modernized Royalty Framework, Oil Sands Royalty, AER Directives 089, 090 and 091.
- Map layers: AGS Open Data (ArcGIS Online), Alberta Energy and Minerals MapServices and Geoview, AER gis.aer.ca, Government of Alberta TITAN, Natural Resources Canada and the Geological Survey of Canada. Licences are Open Government Licence – Alberta or – Canada unless a dataset page says otherwise.
VERIFICATION
What "verified" means here
- A dataset is verified when its service answered a live request on 2026-10-08: an ArcGIS metadata call plus an export, tile or GeoJSON query, or a WMS GetCapabilities.
- A dataset is drawable when the Atlas can render it in the browser (ArcGIS export, XYZ tiles, feature query or WMS). LERC-encoded grids, downloads and offline services are listed as link-only with the reason.
- Operation status is the latest public statement found in the sweep (AER, company filings, Alberta Major Projects, Global Energy Monitor, trade press) and is dated on each page. Coordinates are approximate.
- Reserve figures quote the publishing body's own basis (proved, proved plus probable, initial in place, resource estimate) and effective date.
PROSPECTIVITY
Knowledge-driven, not machine-scored
Each envelope is a regional polygon drawn from AGS and GSC mapping with an explicit statement of the geological conditions that make the deposit type more likely there, a favourability grade from 1 (permissive only) to 5 (producing or drill-proven), and the list of public datasets that test it. Envelopes are exploration screens for stacking layers, not resource boundaries, and they are deliberately transparent so a geologist can disagree with a specific line.
AGS's own prospective-areas layer and GSC national prospectivity grids are available as separate layers for comparison.
VALUATION MODEL
How the live dollar figures are produced
Subsurface assets are valued as in-place quantity × a benchmark price × a live price index × a recovery factor, and counted as economic in proportion to how far the live index clears a per-commodity break-even index. The price index follows the Scenario Laboratory sliders: oil-linked commodities track WTI minus the WCS differential, gas tracks AECO, heat tracks the power price, pore space tracks the carbon price.
Quantities are order-of-magnitude in-place figures tied to the cited AGS and GSC products. The project economics sandbox on the home page uses illustrative seed projects to demonstrate the NPV, IRR, break-even and capital-allocation engine; those six projects are not real assets and their figures should not be quoted.
FEASIBILITY RUBRIC
What the ratings mean
- High: producing today or financeable with current technology, infrastructure and policy.
- Moderate: resource defined and technology demonstrated, but economics, regulation or infrastructure still has to close.
- Low: known resource with a structural obstacle (grade, policy, logistics, market).
- Speculative: no defined resource; a target type, not a project.
Each rating is backed by five scored dimensions (technical, economic, infrastructure, regulatory, social and environmental) with a one-line justification on the profile page.
CITE, REUSE, CONTACT
Using the Atlas
Cite as: Sovereign Policy Institute (2026). Alberta Resource Economics Atlas, data as of 2026-10-08. atlas.landintelligence.online. Then cite the underlying source named on the page for any specific figure. Underlying datasets remain under their publishers' licences.
Every table on the site is available as JSON from the public API linked in each page footer. The companion tools are the Land Intelligence survey planner and the Survey Data Registry.
Corrections and additions are welcome through landintelligence.online. New data sweeps are recorded in What changed.