AER Wells Lifecycle Status

The Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) classifies every licensed well by its current licence_status value — a single field that drives the legal/regulatory standing of the wellsite. Township Canada surfaces five customer-facing lifecycle categories on the wells map, plus the orphan flag that crosses category lines.

The five lifecycle categories

The legend filter in the data catalog UI lets you toggle each category independently — so a closure-obligation analyst can show only Suspended + Abandoned wells across a township, and an operator can show only Active wells in their target area.

Orphan vs. abandoned — they're not the same

This trips people up. Abandoned is a regulatory state (the well has been plugged and the licence isn't active). Orphan is a financial-responsibility state (the licensee can no longer fulfill closure obligations and the well has been transferred to the Orphan Well Association inventory).

The relationships:

• An abandoned, non-orphan well — most abandonments. The licensee is still on the hook for surface reclamation.
• An abandoned orphan — the OWA is funding closure; the original licensee is insolvent or otherwise unable to pay.
• A non-abandoned orphan — the OWA has taken ownership but the well isn't physically closed yet.

Township Canada layers the OWA monthly orphan inventory on top of the AER ST37 dataset to surface the orphan flag distinctly. See the orphan + abandoned wells data layer reference.

Who uses each category

Operators planning new activity — filter to Active wells in the target lease area to understand existing infrastructure and licensee mix.

Closure-obligation analysts — filter to Suspended and Abandoned. The AER's industry-wide closure spend target is allocated against these wells; understanding the per-licensee distribution is a Business + Energy Bundle workflow.

M&A diligence teams — operator-level rollup of total wells, by status. The BA licensee snapshot API returns per-Business-Associate counts including orphan exposure.

Surface-rights holders — for a quarter section with one or more wellsites on the title, the lifecycle status tells you who's responsible for what. An abandoned non-orphan well means the licensee still owns the reclamation obligation; an abandoned orphan means the OWA does.

Environmental consultants — Reclaimed status is the certified-clean signal. Filter to Reclaimed wells to identify completed sites for benchmarking and pattern analysis.

Three API endpoints

For programmatic workflows, the Wells API exposes:

• GET /api/wells/search?q=...&limit=10 — text search by UWI, well name, licence number
• GET /api/wells/lookup?lat=...&lng=... — spatial lookup within 500m
• GET /api/wells/[uwi] — single well record

Each returns the full lifecycle metadata: status, fluid, mode, type, full DLS components, depth, KB elevation, orphan flag.

Coverage

• Alberta: full coverage of the AER ST37 dataset
• Saskatchewan (SER), BC (BCOGC): not yet — see roadmap

Related

• Wells data layer reference
• Orphan + abandoned wells flag
• Asset / operator history snapshot
• Township Canada for Oil and Gas Operators