Alberta Energy Regulator resources

The source of information for all Alberta Well Data is the website of Alberta Energy Regulator and all The information was extracted from the following reports:

1) Statistical Report ST37 – well list and following fields

The starting point for WellWiki.org’s Alberta well data is publication ST37, “List of Wells in Alberta.” This publication is updated monthly and is available for download from the AER. website. ST37 includes the following information for all oil and gas wells in the province:

• well identifier

• well name

• license number

• field/pool and/or area/deposit

• operator

• licensee

• total depth

• finished drilling date

• well status

The information about the meaning of each field in the well table is available here

We downloaded the tab-delimited text file and imported this file into our MySQL relational database. As of the May 1, 2015, release this file included 17 fields and 584,588 wells. We also downloaded the shapefiles.

2) Statistical Report ST103-Pool field codes

http://www.aer.ca/data-and-publications/statistical-reports/st103

All lists contained in this report are updated monthly except the Commingled Pool List which is updated daily Lists are available as Microsoft Excel files, PDFs or tab delineated

3) Statistical Report ST104- Licensee Agent Codes (Operators)

http://www.aer.ca/data-and-publications/statistical-reports/st104

This Report replaced the previously published Company Codes list. It provides Business Associate (BA) codes for companies. It includes licensees and agents but also includes companies (e.g., drilling companies) that have codes but are not registered licensees or agents. it is available as a PDF or as a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.

4) Statistical Report ST108- AER Monthly Enforcement Action Summary (Compliance)

http://www.aer.ca/data-and-publications/statistical-reports/st108

ST108, “Monthly Enforcement Action Summary” was published from January 2008 through June 2014, inclusive, a total of 66 monthly reports. Each report provided a summary of the regulator’s compliance activity. We downloaded all archived copies of ST108, and incorporated them into our database of Alberta well data. Unfortunately, these reports were published as PDF files, requiring that we transform them into machine readable, structured text suitable for insertion into our MySQL database.

The regulator’s compliance activity is now available through the AER’s

"Compliance Dashboard"

5) Statistical Report ST102-Facility List

http://www.aer.ca/data-and-publications/statistical-reports/st102

ST 102 is a complete list of batteries, gas plants, meter stations, and other facilities in Alberta. The list has been expanded from previous iterations and now includes additional information frequently requested by customers, such as operator name and facility sub-type description. It is in two parts:

Part A - List of New and Active Facilities

Part B - List of Other Facilities

Both of which are available for download in TXT or PDF formats.

6) Horizontal Well List

http://www.aer.ca/data-and-publications/activity-and-data/horizontal-well-list

Lists of horizontal wells in the province of Alberta Updated on the second Friday of every month, these listing include: well locations (LE,LS,SE,TWP,RG,M,E), licence numbers, well names, Business Associate (BA) codes, licensee abbreviations, spud dates, final drilling dates, total depth, true vertical depth, and last updated dates.

The Horizontal Well List is available for download in a ASCII/TXT format

7)Well coordinates are extracted from AGS coordinate converter tool

http://www.ags.gov.ab.ca/gis/map_converters/conversion_tools.html

Orphan Well Data

In addition to the Data provided by the AER, we collected data on orphan wells from the Orphan Well Association on May 26, 2015. These data included the following:

List of Orphan Wells to be Abandoned

List of Orphan Sites Under Reclamation

According to the Orphan Well Association website, the “to be abandoned” list contains wells which are licensed to defunct licensees and are deemed orphans for the purpose of abandonment.  These wells are scheduled for abandonment in the next 6 months.  As of May 14, 2015, there were 704 wells scheduled for abandonment by the Orphan Well Association. The “under reclamation” list contains sites presently under reclamation. As of May 14, 2015, there were 462 wells undergoing reclamation activities.

Because the Orphan Well Association only makes its data available in PDF format, we transformed these data into Microsoft Excel format using the “Save As Other…” option in Adobe Acrobat. Next, we cleaned the data, and then imported the files into our MySQL Open Wells Database Project. Specifically, we created an Alberta Orphan Well table with all 1,166 wells, and created an “orphan status” flag, which was set to “under reclamation” or “to be abandoned” as appropriate. Using this table, together with other Alberta well data already on hand, we generated pages on WellWiki for 1) each well; and 2) each defunct licensee and their associated orphan wells; and 3) a listing of all Orphan Wells in Alberta.