Alberta Puts $37M Into Drilling Tech Across Oil, Geothermal, Minerals

Alberta is spending $37 million to push drilling technology beyond oil and gas into geothermal and critical minerals, the province said Tuesday.

The money flows through Emissions Reduction Alberta (ERA), a provincial agency. It will back 10 projects spread across Canada, the United States, Switzerland, Norway, and the Netherlands. The total value of the selected projects is nearly $179 million, including private co-investment.

Grant Hunter, Alberta’s Minister of Environment and Protected Areas, said in a statement that the province's innovators are “advancing world-leading drilling technologies that will create jobs, strengthen competitiveness, reduce emissions and unlock new opportunities in geothermal energy, critical minerals, and carbon capture.”

The projects were chosen through ERA’s Drilling Technology Challenge, a program designed to speed up development and commercialization of next-generation drilling tools. The funded work covers robotic automation, AI-driven energy management, hybrid-power systems, and robotic pipe-handling gear aimed at improving safety.

If the technologies work at scale, ERA estimates they will cut 24,100 tonnes of CO2 equivalent across the sectors they touch.

The announcement ties Alberta’s traditional oil-and-gas drilling base to the province’s broader push into technology and AI. The government has said it wants to be a known jurisdiction for tech development, and these grants are one way to keep resource-sector expertise in the same conversation.