The Alberta Securities Commission has released the 2006 edition of its oil and gas review, the report assesses the quality of disclosure for O&G activities.

The report identifies common disclosure issues and explains how to meet the disclosure standards set out by the national rule establishing standards of disclosure for oil and gas activities. It reviewed the annual filings of 380 issuers, and reports that 16 of them were required to refile their disclosure as a result. The sorts of problems it found were reporting errors and omissions of various types.

It notes that issuers usually use the correct terminology in their annual disclosure, but not always in less formal communications such as press releases and webcasts. For example, there is sometimes confusion between reserves and resources.

Also, it notes that while there has been improvement in underlying technical reserves evaluation reports, deficiencies remain.

The most significant new issue it uncovered is increasing disclosure of non-mandatory categories of resources, especially outside the annual filings.