Colorado – All Natural Gas and Oil Wells Now In Google Earth
We decided to see how many oil and natural gas wells have been drilled in the state of Colorado.
34,516 active gas and oil wells in Colorado
It’s got a long history of drilling, and is currently in a booming phase of drilling for natural gas that is having both good and bad impacts on the economy, society, public health and the environment. We downloaded the latest data on wells and permits for new drilling from the State of Colorado’s Oil and Gas Conservation Commission website. Then we sorted the data to make four Google Earth KMZ files:
- All currently active natural-gas and oil wells (34,516 wells)
- All temporarily or permanently abandoned wells (32, 214)
- All currently valid permits to drill new wells (6,142)
- And a single large KMZ file that contains all of the above
Those without Google Earth yet (what’s holding you back?) can see statewide images of the well distribution in our online gallery. Google Earth users are invited to download the KMZs and explore Colorado drilling at your own speed. Leave us a comment to let us know if you think this is useful, and tell everyone about the interesting things you find.
Does anyone have a similar google earth link for oil fields throughout the world?
Brian – that would be useful, wouldn't it? I am not aware of anything like that – it's tough enough finding and maintaining oil & gas well data here in the US (some states make it readily available, others don't; and I have yet to find the data for wells drilled offshore in federal waters). Please let us know what you turn up!
you guys should check out this map that I saw posted a while ago: http://thes.wordpress.com/2010/06/10/gulf-of-mexico-oil-rigs/
It shows all of the currently active oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico and the author talks a bit about his sources. Thanks for putting this together.
Bob – thanks for the heads up, that is a nice map and video showing how oil & gas platforms have marched steadily offshore into deeper waters in the Gulf. They show all platforms ever installed, not just the currently active ones, so you can see the history of development in the Gulf.
Wow you guys did an amazing job. Anyone know if there is anything close to that for the state of Kentucky?
Bryan – thanks (although it's already out of date!). You can download info on Kentucky oil & gas wells at http://kgs.uky.edu/kgsweb/datasearching/OilGas/OGSearch.asp – if you ask, they might provide you with the entire database. Then you could import it into Google Earth and make a map like this for Kentucky, which would be very cool. Let us know if you do that!
Anybody know if there's a more current map depicting the drilling sites in Colorado? The .kmz file above is great but it's a few years old.
Does anybody know where I can find an updated 2010 – 2011 map of active wells in Colorado?
The CO GIS site has an in-browser GIS program that has oil and gas layers. Also, the individual shape files are available for download. The shape files are updated daily but I'm not sure if the in-browser program is as well. Here's the link: http://cogcc.state.co.us/infosys/maps/gismain.cfm#Downloads