Alberta's Natural Resources

Oil Sands: Alberta has the third largest proven oil sands reserves in the world. They have a proven oil sands reserve of circa 168 billion barrels which would guarantee a supply of 1.9 million barrels a day for around 240 years. However, the oil sands investigations have not been completed and could potentially rise to 1.7 trillion barrels. In effect, they have no worries of oil sands running out of supply in the foreseeable future and job security is assured. It also gives the oil companies the long term comfort required to invest very large sums of money to get the oil to the market.

Shale Oil and Gas: Alberta is rich in shale oil & gas and recent research by the Alberta Energy Resources Conservation Board indicate that there is up to 58.6 billion barrels of gas liquids and 423.6 billion barrels of oil in the shale formations in Alberta. The recovery of this vast amount of shale oil and gas will lead both directly and indirectly to massive employment / jobs and with such immense reserves project will be ongoing for very many years.

Coal: Alberta sits on about 37 billion tons of coal covering an area of circa 300,000km². There are 12 mines operating in the province and 6 of those mines supply sub-bituminous coal to local power plants. Alberta also exports a substantial amount of coal (mainly mountain coal), particularly to Asia. There are other uses being investigated for sub-bituminous coal like converting the coal into crude oil while an Alberta company is considering gasification to make use of the coal. They are proposing to construct an underground facility to turn coal into electricity through gasification.

Non-Energy Minerals: It is estimated that the minerals industry, excluding oil and gas, employs 10,000 people in Alberta. The non-energy minerals include sand and gravel, sandstone and other building stone, iron and magnetite, gold, limestone and salt. There are no underground mines active in Alberta at present. There are potentially several other minerals that are commercially viable in Alberta and in fact there are predictions that a diamond mine could be operating within the next ten years.

Conclusion: The Canadaian province of Alberta is rich in energy and non-energy resources. The development and extraction of these resources create great natural wealth for the province in terms of employment / jobs and their exports generate billions of dollars in revenue. The volumes of Alberta’s natural resources are immense and the job opportunities and the demand for workers are enormous. This wealth can be expected to last for several hundred years. With new areas for exploration and improved recovery methods it can only be expected that further deposits of wealth will be uncovered.