How to find oil and gas wells on or near your property

Why buyers, owners and neighbors check

There are many reasons to check for a well. You might be buying land, have found an old pipe sticking out of a field or woodlot, or want to know whether gas is leaking near a house. You might be about to build or put in a water well, or have received a letter about a lease or royalties. All of these lead to the same question: what wells are on or near this piece of land, who is responsible for each one, and is it still open?

State oil and gas regulators answer that question. Each state's regulator issues drilling permits and keeps a registry of every well it knows about, with a location, an operator and a status. Federal agencies are involved mainly for wells on federal and tribal land and for national counts such as the U.S. Geological Survey's orphaned-well inventory.

Step by step: checking a parcel

1. Get the location. You need an address and, ideally, the parcel's coordinates or outline. A county GIS parcel viewer or a GPS reading taken on site will do.
2. Look at the map. On the WellCensus live map, zoom to the parcel. At national zoom it shows documented orphans in red. Active wells appear as you zoom in to regional level, and every well, including plugged ones, appears at street level. Click a point to open the well's page.
3. Search the county. Each state page under Wells by state links to county pages, which show the county's well counts, including orphans, and list its wells. Use the search page if you already have a well name or an API number from a deed, lease or old document.
4. Confirm with the state regulator. The official record and any scanned files, such as permits, completion reports and plugging affidavits, are held by the regulator. Texas's Railroad Commission, for example, runs a public GIS viewer you can search by API number or address. Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection runs an oil and gas mapping tool that shows known abandoned and orphan wells around a property.
5. Read the status carefully. A plugged well has been sealed under state rules. An active or shut-in well has an operator of record you can contact. An orphaned well is unplugged and has no responsible operator, and it is the one to flag to the state.

What a well record tells you

A registry record gives you:

• the well's API number, the permanent ID you'll use with the regulator
• the operator of record, the company legally responsible for the well
• its status: active, shut-in, plugged, orphaned or other
• its type, such as oil, gas or injection
• where the state publishes them, spud, completion and plug dates and depth

An operator's page on WellCensus lists that company's other wells and the states it holds wells in. That's useful if you need to reach it about a well near you. See the operators directory.

A well record does not say who owns the minerals beneath the land, whether a lease is in effect or who is owed royalties. Those answers are in the county's deed and lease records. A title professional or an attorney can trace them.

The limits of any map

A map can't show wells that were never recorded. Pennsylvania's regulator estimates there are hundreds of thousands of legacy wells in that state alone that were abandoned without being properly decommissioned, far more than appear in any inventory. Treat a clean map as a good sign, not a guarantee, especially in older oil regions. Treat any plotted location as approximate until you've compared it with the regulator's record.

WellCensus has its own gaps, and they are listed on the methodology page. It carries 23 state registries. In Texas and Nebraska the free state file is a location index, so the well's location and status class are listed but the operator and dates may be missing. Elsewhere, only the USGS orphaned-well inventory is covered. If a state you need isn't covered, its regulator's own well search is the place to go.

If you find a well that isn't on the map

Things to watch for include a capped pipe or casing in the ground, an old wellhead with valves, a patch of dead vegetation, bubbling in standing water, an oily sheen or a gas smell. Pennsylvania's guidance for landowners covers what to do:

• Don't touch it. Don't open valves, turn knobs or try to modify the well. Old wells can hold extremely high pressure or release explosive or toxic gases.
• Check the inventory first. Make sure the well isn't already recorded near your property.
• Report it. Give the regulator the address or nearest intersection, GPS coordinates, photos, and any sounds, smells, discharge or dead vegetation you've noticed. Pennsylvania law requires a legacy well to be reported to its regulator within 60 days of discovery.
• Don't try to use it or remove it yourself. Under Pennsylvania's guidance, finding a well doesn't by itself make you responsible for it. Trying to produce from it, taking an economic benefit from it or improperly removing evidence of it can create liability.

Other states have their own reporting rules and plugging programs. If you aren't in Pennsylvania, call the oil and gas division of your state's regulator before doing anything to the well.