Oil and Gas Well Statistics for Kansas

Updated: July 1, 2020

View Current Year
View 2017-2020

  2013 2014 2015 2016
Wells permitted 6,368 7,110 2,304 1,166
New oil wells drilled 3,409 3,587 1,193 647
New gas wells drilled 206 235 91 34
Dry holes drilled 945 951 404 223
Service wells drilled 906 1,003 535 320
Suspended wells drilled        
Total New Wells
Drilled
5,498 5,787 2,225 1,228
Total New Footage
Drilled
15,135,790 15,490,795 6,208,092 3,453,700
Coalbed methane
well permits issued
1 3 0 1
Coalbed methane
wells drilled
0 4 0 1
Horizontal
wells permitted
259 238 64 13
Horizontal
wells drilled
227 222 59 14
  Number of wells
(as of update date)
Total Producing oil wells 68,751
Total Producing gas wells 24,866
Total Producing coalbed methane wells 4,451
Total SWD or INJ wells 5,337
Total EOR wells 8,762
Records in our Master List 489,924
Total Count of Wells 447,717

Notes on methods

Oil wells are those with a well status of "OIL", "O&G", "OIL-P&A", or "O&G-P&A". Gas wells are those with a well status of "GAS", "CBM", "GAS-P&A", "CBM-P&A". The "-P&A" flag means the well was completed successfully but has since been plugged. Service wells are those with a well status of "CATH," "EOR," "SWD," or "WATER."

Dry holes are those with a well status of "D&A".

Permitted coalbed methane wells are those for which we have a permit date within the desired year. Wells drilled may have been permitted in a previous year. Expired permits will often be changed from "CBM" to "LOC" at some point. Workovers are not included in CBM counts.

We have no information in our database on how an oil well is producing (flowing or artificial lift).

Total wells producing is calculated by adding all the wells with valid completion dates or spud dates and no plugging dates. Only wells with no workover code are counted, but a certain percentage of older wells are plugged but do not have a plugging date.

Horizontal wells listed are based on a digit present in second place of the workover code (i.e. '-0100','-0101','-0200', etc.). As with the other searches, a well is listed as drilled once we have a spud date in the database. Sometimes the status will be upgraded to drilled or completed before we have the date available.

"Records in our Master List" is a count of every Kansas record in our list of wells; can include highway test holes where core or cuttings were taken, water wells where electric logs were run, and so on. "Total Count of Wells" is a count of records where they do not appear to be workovers and the type of well is related to the oil and gas industry.