Orphan Well Due Diligence

Closure-obligation exposure is one of the central diligence questions in Alberta oil and gas M&A and surface-rights transactions. The Orphan Well Association (OWA) inventory grows when licensees become unable to fulfill closure obligations — by year-end 2025 the orphan count was in the tens of thousands. Township Canada surfaces the orphan flag on every well plus a per-operator rollup via the BA licensee snapshot API.

The two diligence questions

For an M&A buyer: "What closure exposure am I inheriting?" Total Active + Suspended + Abandoned (non-orphan) wells in the seller's portfolio. Wells already on the OWA's books don't transfer closure cost — but the seller's operating history might indicate future orphan risk.

For a surface-rights holder: "Is the well on my land an OWA-funded closure or a licensee-funded one?" Different operational and timeline expectations.

Both questions are answered by the orphan flag + lifecycle status on each well.

How to pull the data

Single-well lookup

GET /api/wells/[uwi]

Returns the full lifecycle metadata for one UWI, including is_orphan, is_abandoned, abandonment_date, and reclamation_status. Useful for diligence on a specific surface lease or a specific well being negotiated.

Operator rollup via BA licensee snapshot

GET /api/operators/[ba_code]/snapshot

Returns total wells, plus splits by Active, Suspended, Abandoned, Orphan, Reclamation-certified. Backed by the app.aer_ba_snapshot materialized view (refresh concurrently — fast reads). For an M&A diligence dashboard, this is the one-shot operator profile.

See the full BA licensee snapshot reference.

Map view

In the data catalog, the Wells layer legend has an Orphan filter that surfaces only OWA-inventory wells (regardless of their lifecycle status). Combined with the standard Active/Suspended/Abandoned filters, this gives the full operator-portfolio picture.

A typical M&A workflow

Pull the seller's BA code from the AER directives. (BA = Business Associate code — every licensee has one.)
Hit the operator snapshot API for that BA. Total wells + breakdown by status.
Compute the inherited closure obligation roughly as: Active wells (future obligation) + Suspended wells (near-term reactivation or abandonment) + Abandoned non-orphan wells (open reclamation work).
Subtract the orphan count — these don't transfer in the M&A; the OWA is funding the closure.
Pull operator history for the highest-exposure wells. The transfer-notice history shows whether the seller has been actively divesting or accumulating.

For dollar-value diligence, the per-well closure cost estimate is industry-standard — the AER publishes liability rating models that operators use internally. Township Canada doesn't currently surface a per-well dollar estimate (that's downstream of the data we ship).

A typical surface-rights workflow

Pull the parcel report at /parcel/[lld] for the title in question
Read the wells listing for the parcel (if the parcel sits over one or more licensed wells)
For each well, check the orphan flag: if orphan, OWA-funded closure; if not orphan, licensee-funded
For orphan wells, the timeline is OWA-driven. Their public inventory updates monthly; the well's place in the closure queue is sometimes available via OWA outreach.
For non-orphan abandoned wells, the licensee retains the reclamation obligation. If the licensee is suspended or in financial distress, that's an emerging orphan risk worth flagging.

What this doesn't replace

Direct AER directives lookups — for the licence-level audit trail, the AER's regulatory portal is authoritative
OWA direct contact — for orphan timeline expectations on a specific well
Liability rating computation — Township Canada doesn't currently compute the per-well dollar estimate

Coverage

Alberta: full coverage via AER ST37 + OWA monthly inventory join
Saskatchewan (SER), BC (BCOGC): not yet

Orphan Well Due Diligence: M&A and Surface Rights Workflows