Oil & Gas Drilling Data: From County Permits to Rig-Sensor Corpora · Head-to-head
AER Alberta Energy Outlook (ST98) - well activity data vs Colorado ECMC (COGCC) Data Portal
Which oil & gas drilling data: from county permits to rig-sensor corpora data fits your job: AER Alberta Energy Outlook - well activity data, or Colorado ECMC Data Portal. API, files, or your warehouse. Daily, weekly, or hourly.
AER Alberta Energy Outlook (ST98) - well activity data
Colorado ECMC (COGCC) Data Portal
Where the fields line up
No shared field names. These two answer different questions.
| Field | AER Alberta Energy Outlook - well activity data | Colorado ECMC Data Portal |
|---|---|---|
Year | documented | not in this set |
New Wells Placed on Production | documented | not in this set |
PSAC Area | documented | not in this set |
Formation | documented | not in this set |
Initial Productivity | documented | not in this set |
Decline Rate | documented | not in this set |
Production | documented | not in this set |
Supply Cost | documented | not in this set |
API well number (state, county and sequence components) | not in this set | documented |
Operator name and operator number | not in this set | documented |
Well name, number and title | not in this set | documented |
Spud date and status date | not in this set | documented |
Coverage, side by side
| AER Alberta Energy Outlook - well activity data | Colorado ECMC Data Portal | |
|---|---|---|
| Geographic | Province of Alberta, Canada, broken out by Petroleum Services Association of Canada (PSAC) area, oil sands area and geological formation | State of Colorado, including the Denver-Julesburg and Piceance basins |
| Temporal | Annual actuals from 1999 in the well-count tables, plus a rolling ten-year forecast to 2034; archived editions reach back to 2001 | Spud dates reaching back decades on wells; production reports filed for every month of every year from 1999 through 2025 |
| Granularity | Provincial totals with PSAC-area and formation-level detail; annual frequency | One record per well API (124,387 wells); production at well-facility-month level (657,012 rows in the 2024 file alone) |
What each contains
They tie on 1 attribute. Pick by fit, not by loyalty.
| AER Alberta Energy Outlook - well activity data | Colorado ECMC Data Portal | |
|---|---|---|
| Publisher | Alberta Energy Regulator (AER), the province's hydrocarbon resource regulator | Energy and Carbon Management Commission of Colorado (ECMC, formerly the COGCC) |
| Subject lens | Annual outlook statistics: new wells placed on production by PSAC area and formation, reserves, supply costs and a ten-year forecast to 2034 | Regulatory ledgers: one point per well API with spud dates and depths, permits, oil and gas locations, and per-facility monthly production reports |
| Documented fields | 8 fields, definitions verified during research | 14 fields, definitions verified during research |
| Geographic coverage | Province of Alberta, Canada, broken out by Petroleum Services Association of Canada (PSAC) area, oil sands area and geological formation | State of Colorado, including the Denver-Julesburg and Piceance basins |
| Temporal coverage | Annual actuals from 1999 in the well-count tables, plus a rolling ten-year forecast to 2034; archived editions reach back to 2001 | Spud dates reaching back decades on wells; production reports filed for every month of every year from 1999 through 2025 |
| Granularity | Provincial totals with PSAC-area and formation-level detail; annual frequency | One record per well API (124,387 wells); production at well-facility-month level (657,012 rows in the 2024 file alone) |
| Data formats delivered | Spreadsheet workbooks and ZIP archives behind each report section, plus the full report PDF | GIS shapefile, per-year CSV archives, a geodatabase option and online record queries |
| Best for | Forecast-grade context: how many wells Alberta places on production each year, where they drill, what they cost and what declines ahead | Asset-level work: individual well histories, spud-to-production timelines, operator footprints and monthly volumes by formation |
What each does better
the AER ST98 well activity data
It forecasts. No regulatory ledger projects anything; ST98's base case runs to 2034 - roughly 3,100 new oil wells per year through the decade, stabilizing above 2023 levels - with a one-year tariff scenario beside it. Table S4.4 supplies forecast initial productivity for new wells and Table S4.5 the first-year decline rates, so decline-curve assumptions arrive pre-modeled rather than reverse-engineered.
The bitumen story lives here too: oil sands well activity is a first-class section, not an afterthought.
Its history is curated, not accumulated. Archived editions run from 2001 to 2024, each with its own data files, giving a consistent annual series under a consistent editorial hand. The 2024-versus-2023 movement is stated outright - verticals down 52 percent to just 15 wells, horizontals up 23 percent to 3,370, concentrated in the Cardium and Viking Formations and the Mannville Group.
the Colorado ECMC Data Portal
Row-level resolution nothing annual can match. Every question containing the words Wattenberg, DJ Basin or a specific operator resolves here and nowhere else: 124,387 well points with 37 attributes each - the 10-digit API_Label, operator keyed by number, Well_Title, best-available Spud_Date, maximum measured depth and TVD, field name, status code and full coordinate set. See wellbore data for why depth and geometry matter once you leave the aggregate.
Monthly production at the facility. Annual report CSVs cover every year from 1999 through 2025 - 657,012 rows in the 2024 file alone across 32 columns - plus a rolling monthly extract, so a well's three-phase history (oil, gas, water) builds directly from filings rather than estimates.
The paperwork layer. Permits active and pending, oil and gas locations with Form 2A and Form 45 attachments, directional bottom holes and pending lines, pits, tank batteries, orphaned-well program sites, spills, inspections and incidents, mechanical integrity tests and chemical disclosure statistics. Every attribute is documented - the commission publishes metadata defining all 37 well fields by name, so the dictionary is buildable rather than inferred.
Status as a dimension. The Facil_Stat enum - active, abandoned, dry and abandoned, closed, commingled - turns the inventory into a filterable census of well state, which is exactly what abandonment and liability screens need.
Where they're equivalent
More than their shapes suggest. Same issuer class: both come from the regulator itself - the Alberta Energy Regulator on one side, Colorado's Energy and Carbon Management Commission (formerly the COGCC) on the other - so both speak with statutory authority rather than aggregating someone else's filings. Both score 9 of 10 against the catalog's 7.81 average, and both field dictionaries were definition-verified during research.
Same subject at bottom: hydrocarbon well activity in a single jurisdiction, oil-focused with gas alongside. Both start their usable modern series around the turn of the century - ST98's well-count tables from 1999, Colorado's production archive from 1999 - and both ship as structured tabular files rather than PDF-only narratives. Both also carry the same implicit caveat from opposite directions: ST98's figures are as good as the aggregate allows, Colorado's are as complete as operator compliance makes them, and any vintage you hold deserves a date-stamp either way.
The verdict
Verdict: sample both, pick by fit - they are not substitutes, they are different countries' answer to different questions.
Investors and quants tend toward ST98 for macro positioning and country comparisons and toward ECMC for asset-level factor work; data scientists building models usually want the ECMC panel for training data and ST98 for the prior.
Sample both, pick by fit. See AER Alberta Energy Outlook - well activity data · See Colorado ECMC Data Portal
Or take both in one feed
Yes - as benchmark and microscope.
Three seams decide whether the merge holds. First, keys: there is no shared identifier anywhere - ST98 has no well IDs at all, Colorado's API_Label covers only Colorado - so the join is thematic, never row-level. Second, units and geography: cubic metres per day against barrels and MCF, PSAC areas against counties and basins; fix one conversion pass before any comparison. Third, cadence: one side moves yearly by design, the other daily, so align vintages deliberately - a mid-year ST98 edition against last month's shapefile will disagree about the present, correctly. Browse the rest of the shelf at the oil & gas drilling data hub.
Datadory ships either record alone or both merged onto one calendar, delivered daily, weekly, or hourly - your call. Or take both in one feed.
API, files, or your warehouse. Daily, weekly, or hourly.
Fair questions
Is the AER ST98 well activity data better than the Colorado ECMC Data Portal?
Better at different jobs. The ECMC portal wins on resolution: 124,387 individually identified wells with spud dates, depths and coordinates plus monthly production back to 1999. Sample both, pick by fit.
Do the two datasets cover the same wells?
None at all. ST98 describes Alberta; the ECMC portal describes Colorado. There is no border town, no shared basin, no overlapping well - which makes the pair useful as two national styles of regulation rather than competing coverage of one play.
Which dataset reaches further back?
Both start their modern usable series in 1999 - ST98's well-count tables and Colorado's production archive alike - but the tails differ. Colorado's well layer carries spud dates reaching back decades, and archived ST98 editions run from 2001 to 2024. Only ST98 reaches forward: its base case extends to 2034.
Can I track a single well in the AER ST98 data?
No. ST98 publishes aggregates only - counts of new wells placed on production broken out by commodity, PSAC area and formation - so no individual well is identifiable.
Which should I sample first for a US shale screening?
Start with the Colorado ECMC (COGCC) Data Portal - row-per-well records with operator, spud date, depths, field and monthly oil, gas and water production make it directly model-ready. Add ST98 afterward to put North American activity in a forecast context.
Can Datadory deliver both datasets together?
Yes - sample both and pick by fit, or take both in one feed. Each arrives normalized to its documented field dictionary (eight fields on the ST98 side, fourteen on the ECMC side) with sample rows attached for inspection before anything ships, delivered daily, weekly, or hourly - your call.