WOGCC well lookup, explained

The Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission in Casper is the regulator of record for every oil and gas well in the state, and its website is where the public record lives: permits, well files, status changes, monthly production, spacing orders and the daily spud report. 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 Wyoming well carries an API number of the form 49-XXX-XXXXX: 49 is Wyoming, the next three digits are the county code (005 Campbell, 009 Converse, 025 Natrona, 035 Sublette and so on) and the last five identify the well. Operators print it on stubs and division orders. If you have it, every WOGCC page 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 code — PO (pumping oil), PG (producing gas), FL (flowing), SI (shut-in), AP (approved permit), SP (spudded), PA (plugged and abandoned) and a dozen more. 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.
• Monthly production — oil, gas and water volumes as reported by the operator, usually 2–3 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 (county clerk, 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 bulk well file, the production history, the daily spud report and the spacing orders — and draws them on one map, with your own tracts on top. 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.