Well and pipeline data in British Columbia

British Columbia Map Now Available

Increasingly, FracTracker has been receiving requests to map oil and gas data from a variety of locations.  Now for the first time since the roll-out of the ArcGIS Online-based FracMapper platform last year, we have content dedicated to understanding oil and gas data outside of the United States.  Specifically, this map is focused on the extractive – and midstream – activities in British Columbia, Canada.


British Columbia Shale Viewer. Please click the expanding arrows icon in the upper right corner of the map to access the full page map, complete with legend and descriptions.

British Columbia’s Oil and Gas Commission has records for over 29,000 wells, of which over 11,000 are indicated as being directional.  These are the wells included on this map.  While directional drilling is a broader category than horizontal drilling, which is more commonly associated with hydraulic fracturing, it was the most readily available means of finding wells likely to be unconventional in nature.  And indeed, a substantial majority of the directional wells drilled in the province correspond to the unconventional plays in the northeastern portion of British Columbia.

While the available well data was lacking some of the detail that FracTracker prefers, this is made up for by a data type that is difficult to encounter in the United States:  pipeline rights-of-way.  Note that not all of the wells on the map are connected by pipelines.  One explanation is that the pipeline data are from October 30, 2006 onward, while over 3,600 of the directional wells were drilled before that time.

Well and pipeline data in British Columbia
This image shows a closeup of the British Columbia Shale Viewer, highlighting pipeline data

Other notable data types for British Columbia include oil and gas facilities, and a layer showing the extent of individual well sites.  For more information, see the Details section of the map.