34 states have active oil & gas activity in U.S. based on 2016 analysis

Each year, FracTracker Alliance compiles a national well file to try to assess how many wells have been drilled in the U.S. We do this by extracting data from the various state regulatory agencies that oversee drilling in oil and gas producing states. We’re a little late posting the results of our 2016 analysis, but here it is.

Based on data from 2014-2015, 34 states * saw drilling activity, amounting to approximately 1.2 million facilities across the U.S. – from active production wells, to natural gas compressor stations, to processing plants.

The process we used to count these wells and related facilities for the 2016 analysis changed a bit this time around, which obviously impacts the total number of wells in the dataset. 2016’s compilation was created in consultation with Earthworks, for the purpose of informing the Oil and Gas Threat Map project. The scope was more restrictive than previous editions (see our 2014 and 2015 analyses), focusing only on wells that we were reasonably confident were actively producing oil and gas wells, thus excluding wells with inactive or uncertain statuses, as well salt water disposal (SWD) and other Class II injection (INJ) well types.

There are facilities included in this dataset that we don’t normally tally, as well (See Table 1 below). Earthworks was able to determine the latitude and longitude coordinates of a number of compressors and other processing plants, which are included in the dataset below and final map.

In all, the facility counts are reduced from about 1.7 million in 2015 to about 1.2 million in 2016, but this is more a reflection of the definition than substantial changes in the active well inventory in the U.S. You can explore this information by state, and additional results of this project, using Earthworks’ Threats Maps. Additionally, the national well file is available to download below.

You’ll notice that we don’t refer to the wells in this analysis as “fracked” wells. The primary reason for not using such terminology is because no one common definition exists across those states for what constitutes a hydraulically fractured well. In PA, for example, such wells are considered “unconventional” because drilling occurs in an unconventional formation and usually involves some sort of well stimulation. Contrastingly, in CA, often drillers use “acidizing” not fracking – a similar process that breaks up the ground using acidic injected fluids instead of the high pressure seen in traditional fracking. As such, we included all active oil and gas production instead of trying to limit the analysis to just wells that have been stimulated. We will likely continue to use this process until a federal or national definition of what constitutes a “fracked” well is determined.

Table 1. Facilities by State and Type