Map service: United States Decadal Production History Cells

This map service displays present and past oil and gas production in the United States, as well as the location and intensity of exploratory drilling outside producing areas.

To construct this map, digital data were used from more than 3 million wells in IHS Inc.'s PI/Dwights PLUS Well Data on CD-ROM, current through 10/1/2005. In some areas, the PI/Dwights data tend not to be complete, particularly for pre-1920 production. IHS data was supplemented with state wells databases for Indiana, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Illinois, and Ohio, (current as of 2004 to 2006).

Because of the proprietary nature of many of these databases, the area of the United States was divided into cells one quarter-mile square and the production information of each well is aggregated in each cell. No proprietary data are displayed or included in the cell maps. The cells are coded to represent whether the wells included within the cell are predominantly oil-producing, gas-producing, both oil and gas-producing, or the type of production of the wells located within the cell is unknown or dry. The cell attributes also contain the latitude and longitude values of the center-cell coordinates.