Well Closure
Convert closure site locations, plan remediation crew routes, and file AER closure applications — all from legal land descriptions.
Free account for individual lookups. Contact sales for Business tier pricing and API access.
The Problems
Closure sites are LSDs, not GPS coordinates
Every well closure application filed with the AER references the site by its legal land description. A closure report for LSD 10-33-037-04W5 means a specific 40-acre parcel near Sundre — but the field crew's GPS doesn't read DLS notation. Before a remediation truck rolls, someone converts the LSD to latitude and longitude. If that conversion is wrong, the crew arrives at the wrong quarter section and loses half a day.
The AER's closure mandate for 2026 exceeds $750 million in industry-wide spending. With 466,000 total wells in Alberta and thousands of active closure projects, the volume of LSD-to-GPS conversions happening daily across closure companies is substantial — and every one of them needs to be correct.
Batch processing closure inventories is tedious
A closure company managing 200 wells across central Alberta keeps its site inventory in a spreadsheet. Each row is a legal land description. When the company needs GPS coordinates for an AER submission, a route plan, or a GIS overlay, someone converts those descriptions one at a time. For a 200-site inventory, that's a full day of manual work — repeated every time the list changes.
Orphan well programs managed by the Orphan Well Association involve thousands of sites. Manual conversion at that scale doesn't work.
Field crews need efficient routes, not just coordinates
A well closure inspector visiting eight sites across Townships 35 to 40, Range 3-5 W5M, needs more than GPS pins. They need an efficient driving order that accounts for rural road networks, minimizes backtracking, and doesn't waste hours zigzagging across range roads. Without route optimization, crews rely on memory or paper section maps.
Regulatory filings require multiple export formats
AER closure applications, environmental site assessments, and reclamation certificate packages require location data in specific formats. Some need coordinates in a spreadsheet. Others need KML files for Google Earth overlays or Shapefiles for GIS integration. Producing each format manually from a legal land description adds time to every submission.
What Township Canada Does
Single-location conversion
Enter any well closure site LSD — 10-33-037-04W5, NE-22-041-06W5, or any standard DLS notation — and get GPS coordinates, a map view with the survey grid overlay, and the parcel centroid ready to copy into field equipment or a navigation app.
The map shows township, section, quarter section, and LSD grid lines so the closure coordinator can visually confirm the site against adjacent parcels before dispatching a crew.
Search guide · DLS to GPS converter
Batch conversion for closure inventories
Upload a CSV with your full closure site inventory. Map columns to LSD, section, township, range, and meridian — whether your source data stores the description in one column or splits it across five. The converter processes the entire list in seconds and flags any descriptions that didn't resolve, catching data errors before they reach the AER or the field.
Download results as CSV, KML, Shapefile, DXF, or GeoJSON. A remediation company uploading 500 closure sites gets GPS coordinates for every row in under a minute. The same job done manually takes days.
Batch conversion guide · Export formats
Route planner for field crews
Add closure site LSDs as stops in any order. The route planner converts each one to GPS coordinates, calculates the most efficient driving sequence, and generates turn-by-turn directions on rural range roads and township roads. Hand off to Google Maps on mobile for real-time navigation.
An inspector visiting eight closure sites across three townships can cut 40 minutes of driving compared to an unoptimized order — time better spent on site assessments.
Route planner guide · Directions guide
Export for regulatory submissions
Results export to CSV, KML, Shapefile, GeoJSON, DXF, and PDF. That covers the AER submission team working in spreadsheets, the environmental consultant loading data into ArcGIS, and the engineering firm importing coordinates into AutoCAD for reclamation planning.
Recommended Plan
Business plan covers the full well closure workflow:
- Unlimited searches and batch conversions
- CSV upload with no row limit
- All export formats including Shapefile and DXF
- Team management with role-based access
- Route planner for field crew dispatch
- Survey grid map layers — township, section, quarter section, LSD — for visual verification
Individual consultants doing occasional site lookups can start on the free plan. Companies processing closure inventories, running field operations, or filing AER applications need Business.
Start Converting Closure Sites
Free account for individual LSD lookups. Business plan for batch processing, all export formats, team management, and route planning.
Get started free · Contact sales
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