i did a bit of playing with aer data back in december, and was super surprised just how distributed the wells are.

without doubt there is a main concentration around Lloydminister though, and the developed oil sands at least are all in one place

Speaking as an Albertan, it's only a very loud and vocal minority. The UCP government has seen that the premier only stays in power if they cowtow to the fringe crazies in the party, and that's what she's doing.

i think its mostly people that live pretty far from any oil fields that are the big proponents?

kinda red deer ish? west of the queen e?

the actual oil industry and workers are either in the cities, or from out of province, and work seasonally-ish on the oil fields. dunno if its true anymore, but there used to be a joke that it was all newfies, who'd work just long enough to get unemployment, then head back home til it runs out, then around again.

Neither group has any particular incentive to have alberta be independent, nor a US state. The businesses might want to replace the newfies and albertans with more predictable undocumented latino labour, but they dont have experience in how to do that or hide say, injuries, from the government.

that said, a vote still isnt a bad thing - itll shower alberta with federal attention to get things alberta wants, like pipelines east, west, and north, and Id love to have the alberta grid connected to newfie hydro, rather than having quebec sell newfie power to americans