Production of Oil and Gas wells - download

   About the Data  
Michigan started issuing permits for wells in 1927.  There were some wells drilled before then, and a few of them are still producing.  Computerized tracking of oil and gas production began in Michigan in 1982. Prior information is only available from microfilm. 
   In 1982 only prorated wells (wells that had production regulated) were tracked.  These were wells in the Salina, Niagaran, and deeper formations.
   In 1997, rules were changed to track production on all wells in Michigan.  Neither the  production download or the online database includes all the production in the State, but they do include everything our database at the time they were last updated.  The online database is updated automatically once a week.  The production download is updated once a month around the first of the month.
   Companies have 45 days from the end of the month to report production to us, and it does take us some time to enter the data into the computer.  Assuming the the company reports everything to us on time, it is not uncommon that the database is two months behind in information.  A few compaines are delinquent in reporting and may be even further behind.

   Cumulative production is not available per se.  However, there is a query in the download database that totals the monthly production.  If a prorated well started producing after 1982, a cumulative can be found by running that query.  If a well is not prorated but started producing since 1997 a cumulative can be calculated similarly.  There is another query that gives yearly totals. 

   PRUs  Production in Michigan is kept by PRUs or Production Reporting Units.  A PRU may have only one well, in which case the production for that PRU is the well production.  A lot of PRUs have more than one well, especially in the Antrim formation.  There is no way to break out production by individual well in these cases.  To find out what wells are in a PRU, check the PRU Wells table.
   Because of electronic filing of production, we have been able to change some of our PRUs with lots of wells in them to individual well PRUs.  This may result in some confusion since PRU numbers have changed for various permit numbers.  We believe that most people would rather have the individual well production when we can provide it.  Electronic filing has helped us do this.  Most of these changes took place near the end of 2004.  Consult the PRU Wells table to find the Permit Number - PRU relationships.

   Well Locations: There is a download for well locations.  By comparing the API#s or Permit#s in the tables, the locations for the wells here can be found.

    The Production Download 
The following download is in a zipped file of a Microsoft Access 2000 database.  If you do not have Microsoft Access, use the Online Oil and Gas Database.
Gas is in mcf (thousand cubic feet) at 14.73 psi
Liquids (oil, water, ngls, condensate) are in (42 gallon) bbls.
Oil is crude oil.  Water is also called brine.
ngls (Natural Gas Liquids) and condensate are both a very light hydrocarbon that drops out of gas during processing.

The production file, approximately 7-8 MB, includes the date created in the file name.  This is a zipped (compressed) file.  Before it can be opened with Microsoft Access it must be unzipped.

The files are available via FTP.  Select the link at the end of this sentence to get details about accessing the  DEQ FTP server. This site works.  If you can't connect, usually a pop-up blocker or a company firewall is stopping it, or it could be something on your computer.  Contact your IT person to fix this, or take a laptop to a nearby wi-fi hot spot and you'll be able to connect.  We can't help you fix this.  All we can do is check to see that the site is not temporarily down. (Important:  Copy the file to your own computer before trying to open it.  It will not open from the ftp server.)

This production file will be updated monthly near the 1st of the month.  The date the file was created will be in the file name: ogs-oilandgas-production-all-YYYY-MM-DD.zip 

Any questions John McTiernan can be reached by phone at 517-241-1507.