This paper provides a review of the methods of acquiring, processing and disseminating basic energy resource data within the Province of Alberta.

For many years, the Alberta Government, through the Energy Resources Conservation Board, has had a policy of encouraging dissemination of energy resources data. Data in this context is the non-proprietary, non-confidential, and generally non-interpretive data required by engineers, geologists, accountants and administrators in both industry and government.

The traditional method of acquiring and disseminating the data was oriented towards visual records with manual transcription of data to summary reports. Since approximately 1966, both the Energy Resources Conservation Board and industry have developed computer assisted methods. Although these function reasonably well, the systems presently in operation are limited to the oil and gas area. They are not a practical source of data for the small to medium-size company and have limited usefulness to the larger companies. Additionally, data for coal and oil sands in computer processable form is not presently available.

With greatly increased interest in non-renewable energy resources, including oil and gas as well as coal and oil sands, the need to improve existing procedures has been recognized. The Energy Resources Data System has been proposed to develop a centralized computer assisted means of acquiring and disseminating basic energy resource data. The objectives and activities to date of ERDS are reviewed in some detail.