Mineral Zone Query

Canadian Crown Mineral Rights

Most filtering can be performed through the bottom table, but in the case of Canadian Crown Mineral Rights, a common use case is to filter by rights containing a particular zone. To achieve this filter, we need to apply more advanced logic to determine the relative age of each zone and consider specifications in the zone description like exclusions.

StackDX’s Zonal Query is based on the relative age of each zone as defined in stratigraphic columns or Table of Formations published by the Alberta Geological Survey and other provincial equivalents. An interactive view of these stratigraphic columns can be found here.

The Zone Query does not consider whether or not a zone is actually present and is not district based (not broken into Southern Plains, Northern Mountains and Foothills, etc.). It is solely an age based query and needs additional steps to filter out rights that may not be prospective for the targetted query.

Initiating a Zone Query

1. Turn on the Mineral Rights layer found in the Quick Preview Library. This is the layer of all crown mineral rights.

2. Apply any initial filters or selections to narrow your area of interest (e.g. an operator or an area)

3. Ensure this layer is selected in the Workspace

4. Click Import / Tools → Zone Query. If the layer hasn't been selected, there will be an error requiring you to return to select the layer.

Mineral Rights layer has been turned on and an area of interest was selected (Shown in Blue). Then the Zone Query was initiated through the Import/Tools button shown in red rectangle

1. The Zone Query dialog allows for a query to be run based on a column of zones. These zone selection only allows for zones found on the AGS' stratigraphic column (here for reference) Examples: Find all Mineral Rights that contain zones between Surface and the Base of the Cardium. Set the From = "Surface" and the To = "Cardium". The 'From' assumes Top of the zone and the 'To' assumes Bottom. Find all Mineral Rights that contain the Cardium zone Set the From = "Cardium" and the To = "Cardium", which is the equivalent of 'From Top of Cardium to the Base of Cardium'.

2. Once the zone top and bottom has been selected, click the 'Search' in the bottom right of the Zone Query dialog. There is an additional Area selection should you wish to narrow the search before running. Searching for a zone across an entire province without any filters will result in a large layer and the search may take time to run.

Open Rights Queries

Filtering Open Mineral Rights by zone can also be accomplished through the same workflow. The Open Rights is a layer of quarter sections that contain available rights for that quarter section. Examples: If Section 25-043-09W5 has a single mineral agreement with a zone description that covers Surface to the Base of Cardium, then it has open rights from the Base of Cardium to the Basement. If Section 23-039-11W5 is owned by the crown and his no mineral agreements covering it, it has open rights from Surface to Basement. If a search is run to find Duvernay in the 'Open Rights' layer, both of these sections will return true. In the case of 25-043-09W5 it is true because the Duvernay is below the Cardium and not held by the existing agreement. For 23-039-11W5 it is true because Surface to Basement is open. To view land owned by the crown, there is a public layer in the library titled 'Crown Land Ownership' which can be added to the workspace. This layer is used in the open rights query to exclude Freehold land from the results.