ECMC well lookup, explained: finding a Colorado well and what the record won't tell you

The Colorado Energy and Carbon Management Commission (formerly COGCC) (Denver) is the regulator of record for every oil and gas well in Colorado, and its website is where the public record lives: permits, well files, status changes, production and spacing orders. It is thorough. It is also organised for regulators and operators, not for the person holding a check stub, so here is the map.

The API number is the key

Every Colorado well carries an API number beginning 05-: 05 is the state, the next three digits are the county and the last five identify the well. Operators print it on stubs and division orders. If you have it, every page of ECMC's COGIS well database and GIS map (search by API, operator or location) will take it. If you only have a well name, search by name and county, but be ready for several wells that share a name across different sections.

What the well record contains

• Status. COGIS statuses include PR (producing), SI (shut-in), TA, AB (abandoned), DG (drilling), AL (abandoned location) and AC (active permit); the map folds them into the producing / permitted / spudded / plugged groups it uses in every state. The status tells you whether a well is a payer, a promise or a memory.
• Location — surface hole and, for horizontals, the bottom hole. The bottom hole is often in a different section from the surface, which matters enormously to whoever owns minerals under the lateral.
• Production — oil, gas and water volumes as reported by the operator, usually a few months behind.
• Documents — the application for permit to drill, completion report, directional survey and sundry notices.

What it won't tell you by itself

Three things you will want that a single well page can't give you: which wells drain your tract (that lives in spacing orders, cross-referenced by section), who owns the minerals (clerk and recorder, and the BLM for federal), and what the area is doing — recent spuds, rigs on location, permits filed around you. Each of those is on the site somewhere; pulling them together for one section is the work.

A faster route

Oilstats.us loads the same public files — the well file, the production history and the spacing orders — and draws them on one map with your own tracts on top, for Colorado and the four states around it. Click a section and you see every well, its status, production trend and unit; type a name or API and it takes you there. The regulator's record stays the authority; the map is the way to read it in seconds.