Most licensed wells aren't producing

November 2026Illustrative, not for reserves or investment decisions

"Alberta has 668,000 wells" is a common line, and it is true of the regulator's well file. It is a poor guide to how many wells make anything. We matched the Well Infrastructure files for Alberta and Saskatchewan against the production files, and counted which wells reported production in the last 12 months (October 2025 to September 2026).

1. The headline

Province	Wells in the infrastructure file	Reported production, last 12 months	Share
Alberta	667,540	143,238	21%
Saskatchewan	158,165	41,887	26%

"Producing" means a positive oil or gas volume in at least one of the last 12 months in the public production files. Injection and disposal wells are not production wells.

About one well in five in Alberta, and one in four in Saskatchewan, reported production in the past year. The rest are abandoned, suspended, being drilled, injectors or simply idle.

2. What the status field says

Figure 1. Alberta wells by status in the infrastructure file, and how many reported production in the last 12 months. Bar length is on a square-root scale so small groups stay visible. Real data.

The status codes are a good guide where they exist. Wells listed as flowing or pumping reported production 96% and 94% of the time; suspended and abandoned wells almost never did. But 7,805 wells with a blank status did report production, so filtering on status alone would drop them.

Figure 2. The same view for Saskatchewan. Real data.

3. What is inside Alberta's "oil"

Of Alberta's 143,238 producing wells, 12,819 (9%) are licensed for crude bitumen, yet those wells account for about 75% of the oil-product volume they reported over the last 12 months. In other words, a total labelled "Alberta oil" in the public volumetrics is mostly bitumen. That matters for every other post on this site: our Alberta oil numbers mix conventional oil and bitumen wells, and we did not separate them.

What this means in practice

When you count wells, say which definition you mean: licensed, drilled, or reported production in a period.
Do not use status alone to find producers; check the production files too.
For Alberta oil volumes, remember the bitumen share. If you want conventional oil only, filter by the licence substance.

Limits

Counts are as of the files we downloaded in November 2026 and will drift.
The public production files do not cover every well type, so some real producers may be missing from the "producing" count.
A well that produced only briefly, or reported a tiny volume, counts the same as a large one.
"Bitumen" here means the licence substance, and the volume share compares the oil-product volumes of wells with that licence substance against all wells.

Reproduce it

Code: github.com/Jay-Kimani/TidyWells, posts/cache_matrix.py, posts/wells_study.py, posts/dq_study.py and posts/gen_posts2.py. Download the files yourself from Petrinex and the BC Energy Regulator; we do not host the data.

Illustrative only. Not for reserves reporting or investment decisions.

Contains information licensed from Petrinex public data (Alberta, Saskatchewan) and the BC Energy Regulator; Crown copyright of the provinces is acknowledged. Tidywells is not affiliated with any regulator.