Shut-ins and restarts: how many wells stop, and do they come back?
November 2026Illustrative, not for reserves or investment decisions
Production files only show wells that are producing, so a well that stops simply disappears from the data. Here we follow wells month by month to see how many stop, how often a stop is temporary, and how long the gaps last. A well counts as producing in a month if it reported a positive oil or gas volume.
1. Wells that were producing in January 2022
By September 2026, 84% of the Alberta group, 82% of Saskatchewan and 73% of BC were still reporting production. The curves are not smooth declines: they wobble as wells stop and come back.
2. How common are interruptions?
| Province | Wells that ever produced | Not producing in the last 6 months | Interrupted at least once (3+ months) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alberta | 162,890 | 22,964 (14%) | 18,903 (12%) |
| Saskatchewan | 49,357 | 8,549 (17%) | 5,166 (10%) |
| BC | 12,109 | 2,136 (18%) | 3,762 (31%) |
"Interrupted" = three or more consecutive months with no production between a well's first and last producing month. Wells that stopped and never restarted are not counted as interrupted.
Roughly one well in ten in Alberta and Saskatchewan had at least one gap of three months or more, and BC shows about three in ten. BC's file reports a row for every well and zone with producing days, so zero months are visible there, which may make interruptions easier to see; we would not read the difference as BC wells being less reliable.
3. How long do the gaps last?
| Province | 3 to 5 months | 6 to 11 months | 12 to 23 months | 24 months or more |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alberta | 14,662 | 8,105 | 2,816 | 561 |
| Saskatchewan | 3,699 | 1,883 | 820 | 312 |
| BC | 3,424 | 2,132 | 563 | 125 |
Number of gaps (a well can have more than one), not number of wells.
Among the idle spells that ended with a restart, most were short. In Alberta, 56% were under six months and only 2% lasted two years or more. Wells that stopped and never came back are not in this table, so it says how long restarts take, not how likely they are.
4. Stops and restarts through time
From January 2023, in an average month about 0.7% of producing Alberta wells stopped and about 0.4% restarted (restarts cannot be seen in 2022 because we need earlier production inside the window). Stops were most common in May on average and restarts in Oct; with under five years of data we would not call that a pattern.
What this means in practice
- A well missing from a month's data is sometimes back soon: among wells that did restart, most idle spells were under six months.
- Counts of "producing wells" move around by a percent or so a month for reasons that have nothing to do with drilling.
- When you build a decline curve, expect a few wells in ten to have gaps that a smooth curve will not capture. See the recovery post.
Limits
- A "stop" here is a lack of reported production; it could be a shut-in, a sale, a reporting gap or a change of well ID.
- The window is January 2022 to September 2026, so wells that stopped before 2022 are not in the January 2022 group.
- The last three months of the window cannot be checked for restarts, and wells that stopped near the end may still return.
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.