Oil & Gas Exploration & Production Data: From Country Output Series to the Wellbore Record · Head-to-head
NSTA UKCS Open Data (Wells, Production, Seismic, Infrastructure) vs Global Registry of Fossil Fuels (GRFF)
Which oil & gas exploration & production data: from country output series to the wellbore record data fits your job: NSTA UKCS Open Data, or Global Registry of Fossil Fuels. API, files, or your warehouse. Daily, weekly, or hourly.
NSTA UKCS Open Data (Wells, Production, Seismic, Infrastructure)
Global Registry of Fossil Fuels (GRFF)
Where the fields line up
No shared field names. These two answer different questions.
| Field | NSTA UKCS Open Data | Global Registry of Fossil Fuels |
|---|---|---|
WELLREGNO | Well registration number identifying the wellbore in the production-by-wellbore layer. | not in this set |
FIELD | Field name the wellbore or facility belongs to. | not in this set |
HOST_FAC | Host facility through which the wellbore's production reports. | not in this set |
FIELDNAME | Field name key in the field-level production table - the join target when working at field grain. | not in this set |
FIELDTYPE | Commodity type declared for the field. | not in this set |
date | Production day inside the per-well and per-field history files, written DD/MM/YYYY. | not in this set |
gasvol | Daily gas volume produced, standard cubic metres (sm3). | not in this set |
oilvol | Daily oil volume produced, standard cubic metres (sm3); blank on gas wells. | not in this set |
h20vol | Daily water volume produced, cubic metres. | not in this set |
bhp | Bottomhole pressure for the producing day, bar gauge. | not in this set |
bht | Bottomhole temperature for the producing day, degrees Celsius. | not in this set |
choke | Choke opening, percent. | not in this set |
Coverage, side by side
| NSTA UKCS Open Data | Global Registry of Fossil Fuels | |
|---|---|---|
| Geographic | — | National data for 139 producing countries (about 99% of production); asset-level data for 89 countries with 46,741 assets |
| Temporal | Wellbore records from the 1960s onward; daily production series spanning decades per well (one sampled history starts 18/10/1995) | Asset data years observed around 2018-2023; national series span multiple years per fuel; no fixed historical start published |
| Granularity | Per wellbore and per field; daily production rows carrying volumes, pressures, temperatures, choke and hours online | National-level and asset/project-level, with per-year production and reserves data points and CO2e conversions |
What each contains
Pick by fit, not by loyalty.
| NSTA UKCS Open Data | Global Registry of Fossil Fuels | |
|---|---|---|
| Publisher | North Sea Transition Authority (UK) | Carbon Tracker / Global Energy Monitor |
| Subject lens | — | The world's fossil fuel output as a carbon ledger: oil, gas and coal production and reserves at national and asset level, every volume converted to CO2-equivalent through a published model |
| Documented fields | 19 fields, definitions verified during research | 14 fields, definitions verified during research |
| Geographic coverage | — | National data for 139 producing countries (about 99% of production); asset-level data for 89 countries with 46,741 assets |
| Temporal coverage | Wellbore records from the 1960s onward; daily production series spanning decades per well (one sampled history starts 18/10/1995) | Asset data years observed around 2018-2023; national series span multiple years per fuel; no fixed historical start published |
| Granularity | Per wellbore and per field; daily production rows carrying volumes, pressures, temperatures, choke and hours online | National-level and asset/project-level, with per-year production and reserves data points and CO2e conversions |
| Secondary industries | Oil & Gas Drilling | None |
| Best for | — | Stranded-asset screens, emissions baselines and country benchmarking on one global definition |
Where they're equivalent
More than scale implies. Both are hybrid-source records compiled from official and corporate reporting rather than a single feed. Both were definition-verified during research rather than inferred, and both beat the catalog-wide quality average of 7.81. Both publish machine-readable structured tables rather than scanned documents, and both expose their full data model to programmatic delivery through Datadory. And both are honest about their limits: GRFF states plainly that its emissions figures are model outputs using IPCC tiered factors, while NSTA's own open questions include whether its top-holes count includes sidetracks counted separately. On paper this pair disagrees about almost nothing except the size of the world it describes.
The verdict
Verdict: sample both, pick by fit - one knows the North Sea, the other knows the world, and your question picks the map.
Sample both, pick by fit. See NSTA UKCS Open Data · See Global Registry of Fossil Fuels
Or take both in one feed
Yes - as microscope and atlas. The reverse works too: decline-curve work on a UK portfolio gains its strategic context from what GRFF says the same operators hold everywhere else.
Three seams decide whether the merge holds. First, unit mismatch: GRFF speaks CO2-equivalent tonnes per asset-year, NSTA speaks cubic metres per wellbore-day - join them through operator and geography, never through the volume columns. Second, temporal offset: NSTA's daily series run decades while GRFF's asset years cluster around 2018-2023, so any combined view needs an explicit vintage statement per column. Third, entity resolution: a GRFF project may aggregate several UKCS fields into one row, so map project-to-field explicitly before counting anything. Browse the rest of the shelf at the oil gas exploration production 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 NSTA UKCS Open Data (Wells, Production, Seismic, Infrastructure) better than Global Registry of Fossil Fuels (GRFF)?
Better at different jobs. GRFF wins on breadth: 46,741 named assets across 89 countries with every production figure already converted to CO2-equivalent. Sample both, pick by fit.
Do both datasets report production at the same granularity?
No - and the gap is the point. NSTA reports daily per-wellbore and per-field volumes: gas in standard cubic metres, oil in cubic metres, water, pressures, temperatures and hours online. One answers how a field behaved on a Tuesday; the other answers what a project's output weighs for the climate.
Which dataset covers more geography?
GRFF by design: national series for 139 producing countries covering about 99 percent of global production, plus asset-level records for 89 countries. NSTA goes deep where GRFF goes wide - the UK Continental Shelf offshore plus England onshore petroleum layers, with wellbore records reaching back to the 1960s.
Can GRFF tell me about a specific North Sea well?
Not at that resolution. GRFF's finest grain is the named asset or group of assets - a project such as Asab or Al Dabbiya, not a wellbore carrying a registration number. For spud dates, original intent, operator names, host facilities and daily production for individual UKCS wells, NSTA UKCS Open Data is the record built for it.
Can I get both NSTA UKCS Open Data and GRFF from Datadory?
Yes - sample both and pick by fit, or take both in one feed. Each arrives normalized to its documented field dictionary (19 fields on the NSTA side, 14 on the GRFF side) with sample rows attached for inspection before anything ships, delivered daily, weekly, or hourly - your call.