Sources and References

This page sets out what we treat as a source and what we do not.

Sources we use

• Alberta Energy Regulator directives, bulletins and manuals, in their current published form. These are the authority for what is required, and they are publicly available.
• Alberta statutes and regulations where the requirement sits in legislation rather than a directive.
• Technical literature for water chemistry, treatment performance and reservoir behaviour: peer-reviewed work and established industry technical references.
• Direct operational experience, identified as such. When a guide says a facility will typically do something, that is experience, and we label it rather than dressing it as a rule.

Sources we do not use

Other websites' summaries of directives. This is the big one. Regulatory errors propagate between sites very efficiently, and a claim appearing in ten places is usually one unsourced claim copied nine times. If we cannot find it in the primary document, it does not go in.

Vendor and facility marketing material as evidence of what is required or of how technology performs. It is useful for knowing what exists, not for knowing what works or what the rules are.

Language models as sources of fact. They are fluent about regulation in a way that is particularly dangerous, because a plausible invented directive number reads exactly like a real one.

How we cite

We name the source in the sentence rather than hiding it in a footnote, because a reader deciding whether to rely on a statement should not have to hunt for its basis. Where we name a directive, we mean the current version, and we tell you to check it.

When the position is unclear

Some questions do not have a clean answer, either because the requirement is genuinely open to interpretation or because practice has moved ahead of the written rule. We say so. An honest statement of uncertainty is more useful than false precision, particularly in a field where the consequence of acting on false precision is a compliance problem.

Telling us about a source

If you know of a directive revision, bulletin or technical reference that bears on something we have written, please send it through the contact page. Corrections are handled under our fact-checking policy.