In the 2012 Forbes Global 2000, Penn West Petroleum, Obsidian Energy's predecessor, was ranked as the 1086th largest public company in the world.

[1] Obsidian's oil and gas fields are located in Alberta, along the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin, a region which is one of the world's largest petroleum reserves.

[4]: 5  In spite of the pressure from the low price of oil in general and the record low prices of Canada's heavy oil, benchmark Western Canadian Select (WCS), which is complicated by the lack of pipeline capacity, Obsidian's is "heavily weighted towards gas which resulted in relatively small impact from WCS differentials".

[7] According to a 2004 article in The New York Times, the Canadian royalty trusts (CANROY) were "much larger, both in production and in market capitalization", than those in the United States.

"[8][Notes 1] Penn West was already one of the top ten Canadian oil and gas companies in terms of after tax profits from 2003 through 2007.

[Notes 2] Penn West Petroleum (PWT) was a Canadian royalty trust (CANROY) from 2005–2011, and as such did not pay federal income taxes.

[10] According to a 2007 CBC News article, Penn West became the largest oil and gas energy trust in North America after its acquisition of Canetic.

[17] According to a May 2015 CBC News article, at their May 2015 annual general meeting, Penn West's chair, Richard George, reassured shareholders of the company's viability in spite of a drop of 80% in the value of their shares in 2014/2015 as it struggled with low WTI benchmark prices of $60 US a barrel.

[19] A timeline released in late March, conducted by AER's Geological Survey (AGS), says that there was a "clear" connection between the cluster of "large, felt seismicity" and the deep well disposal injections into the Leduc Formation.

[19] The AGS timeline was informed by scientific data about aftershocks and underground strata collected from sensors placed around the earthquake sites.