United Nations Framework Classification for Fossil Energy and Mineral Reserves and Resources (UNFC 2009)

UNFC 2009 provides a scheme for classifying and evaluating mineral and energy resources (oil, natural gas, coal and peat, and uranium and other nuclear fuels) according to three dimensions: (i) their economic and social viability; (ii) the field project’s status and feasibility; and (iii) the geological knowledge about the resources [IRES, Ch. VI, para. 6.90, PDF p. 98, 2018].

Role in Chapter VI

SEEA-Energy groups UNFC’s detailed categories into three aggregated classes characterizing the commercial recoverability of a resource — Class A (commercially recoverable), Class B (potentially commercially recoverable), and Class C (non-commercial and other known deposits) — reproduced in Chapter VI as Table 6.2 [IRES, Ch. VI, para. 6.90, Table 6.2, PDF p. 98, 2018; see also SEEA-Energy, table 5.1, footnote 57]. This categorization underlies the mineral- and energy-resource stock data items (opening and closing stocks by resource type and by UNFC-derived class) presented at Chapter VI, paras 6.91–6.93. Full detail on Mineral and Energy Resources.

UNFC also receives a brief, earlier, passing mention in Chapter I’s list of harmonization targets for the 2011 IRES revision — there referred to under the shorter, paraphrased name “UN Framework Classification for Energy and Mineral Resources” [IRES, Ch. I, para. 1.23(a)–(f), PDF pp. 18–19, 2018]. Chapter VI, para. 6.90 is the first place in the corpus so far that spells out UNFC’s full name and its three-dimensional classification structure.

confidence: medium — this page currently covers only UNFC’s role as used within Chapter VI’s mineral and energy resources data items; its full classification structure (the complete set of categories along each of the three axes), custodianship and revision history are not yet drawn from the source.

Related

• IRES Chapter VI — Statistical Units and Data Items — the chapter digest this page supports
• Mineral and Energy Resources — Tables 6.1 and 6.2 and the resource-stock data items this classification underpins
• System of Environmental-Economic Accounting for Energy — the framework that groups UNFC’s detailed categories into the three aggregated classes of Table 6.2