About the industry

Energy ResourcesAlbertans own 81% of the province's energy resources. These resources are the backbone of the provincial economy and a vital element of Canada's economy. Energy development is the largest contributor to the province's GDP, capital investments and exports.

Alberta has overcome many energy industry challenges and has earned a reputation as a global leader in ingenuity and innovation. Alberta's reserves are developed in some of the most challenging and varied conditions on the globe, and this highly competitive industry is skilled in dealing with conditions including temperature extremes, permafrost and vast distances.

The Government of Alberta works with industry to promote innovation and technology that helps in evolving our energy sector. Millions of dollars are invested each year by both government and industry to advance research and technological innovations for enhancing the sustainable development of energy resources.

Industry statistics

  • Alberta is home to the third largest crude oil resource in the world. The majority of the resource is found in Alberta's oil sands with proven reserves of over 170 billion barrels of bitumen that can be economically extracted using current technoloiges. As new technologies are developed, the ultimate potential for bitumen reserves could increase significantly to over 300 billion barrels of bitumen supply.
  • Alberta produces 2 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil of which about 75% is raw bitumen from oil sands. A large portion of the bitumen produced is upgraded to a lighter, more valuable synthetic crude oil (sco) that is provided to domestic and international refineries for further processing.
  • Alberta has extensive natural gas resources that include conventional natural gas plus unconventional coalbed methane and shale gas supplies. Reserves of conventional natural gas currently stand at 36.4 trillion cubic feet (tcf) and 2.4 tcf from coalbed methane. Given the early stage of development of shale gas in Alberta, the reserve potential has not yet been assessed.
  • Current production of natural gas in Alberta is approximately 4 tcf that is transported to both Canadian and US markets.
  • Alberta has a massive energy resource in coal. The current estimate for reserves of all types of coal in the province is about 33.3 billion tonnes (36.7 billion tons). This source of energy meets the need of Albertans supplying fuel for about 59% of the province’s electricity generation..

For more on Alberta's energy resources, see:

 

Date Updated:
RDP-2036