Search by licence, location, date and available records
If you know the licence, Simple Search is fastest. If you know a place, date or record type, Advanced Search gives you precise, repeatable filters.
A useful search sequence: choose the clue you trust most, run the broadest useful search, add one field at a time, then open a Wellcard to confirm what is actually viewable.
Four practical search styles
- Simple Search is best for a licence, well name, operator, county, or a familiar phrase such as active natural gas well. See how it works.
- Advanced Search is best for structured land descriptions, street addresses, year ranges, well type and mode, operator autocomplete, nearby places, and record-availability filters. Build a structured query.
- Well Location Map is best when you recognize the area but not its land description. Pan, zoom and select a well, or use the map centre in Advanced Search. Open the Well Map.
- PxTools KMZ and result exports let you use well locations in Google Earth or take a result set away as CSV, GPX or its own KMZ file. Download the PxTools KMZ.
Search by location
Location is often the best clue for landowners and stakeholders researching a known geographic area. Start broad with the location fields you trust, then narrow with additional fields. Not every field is required: adding too many filters can eliminate relevant records.
- County and township: start with Lambton County and Enniskillen Township before narrowing to a lot or concession.
- Lot and concession: add Lot 17 and Concession II when the complete survey description is known.
- Land description plus records: layer a record filter onto the same description—for example, wells in that area with reported geophysical logs.
- Nearby well or street address: search a radius around a known licence, search by street address in Advanced Search, or centre the map. Try within 10 km of T010000; the maximum radius is 50 km.
- Lake Erie filter: show Lake Erie wells only or exclude Lake Erie wells. Add the block or tract you know to narrow an offshore result.
Combine parameters to narrow a search
Advanced Search treats county, township, lot and concession as structured fields. Operator matching is exact, so choose an autocomplete suggestion. Date fields accept a start and end year. Record filters help find wells where a type of material has been indexed.
Precise Search keeps the entered word order and uses prefix matching across well names and operators, which is useful when a short phrase is more reliable than separate keywords. For an operator field, use the autocomplete spelling—for example, Enbridge Gas Inc.
Street-address search is unlimited for members and may be available to public visitors. The Well Map, latitude/longitude fields and nearby-well search are useful alternatives.
How Simple Search interprets a query
Simple Search first looks for a licence pattern. If the query is not a licence, it recognizes a small vocabulary of well types and modes, removes filler words such as well and no, and ranks the remaining terms across well name, operator and county. Up to five remaining terms are used.
Recognized modes
Active, abandoned, not drilled, potential, suspended and unknown. For this quick phrase, use the singular well: try active oil well.
Recognized well types
Oil, natural gas, oil and gas, brine, cavern storage, disposal, dry hole, gas show, injection, licensed, location, natural gas storage, observation, oil show, private gas, solution mining and stratigraphic test. Try active natural gas well.
Core numbers
Type core followed by an exact core identifier—for example, core 860.
Ask a longer research question
Short, familiar searches stay procedural. For a more complex question, members can choose AI search or ask naturally. It tries to understand what you are looking for, then selects the Library search tools that it thinks can best answer the question—often with more precision and complexity than a single standard search.
AI search can work with Wellcards data and other Library knowledge sources, including geological background information from Special Volume 7. It presents the output of those tools as helpful result cards, with links back to the underlying records and research tools.
When a structured query would be useful, AI search can also prepare an Advanced Search with fields filled in as it judges most helpful.
Exact licences, prefixes and variants
A licence-like Simple Search accepts a T, F, H or N prefix, one to seven digits, and an optional trailing letter. The search removes punctuation, treats the letter O as zero in the numeric portion, and pads shorter numbers to six digits. If the normalized identifier exists, its Wellcard opens directly.
T — true licence
A “true licence” issued by the regulator. New wells are drilled or maintained under a T number.
F — legacy tracking
The identifier series still assigned when legacy wells are brought into regulatory tracking. It includes both older and more recently documented legacy wells.
H and N — older legacy series
Older legacy-project identifier series that are no longer assigned. Other obsolete two-letter identifiers have been removed.
The non-T prefix is not a data-quality grade. Legacy records can be sparse simply because the well is old or its original source information is incomplete or uncertain.
Show a base licence and all of its letter variants
When an exact licence-like search does not exist, Wellcards falls back to the six-digit base and any optional one-letter variants. Deliberately append a letter that you know is absent—commonly X—to display that family.
T012345X is the pattern. A working demonstration is T002887X, which currently lists T002887 and T002887A because no exact X record exists.
Dates, activity and available records
- Active oil wells in Essex: well type + mode + county.
- Active natural gas wells in Haldimand: natural gas type + active mode + county.
- Total-depth dates from 2020–2024: use the same year in both boxes for “drilled in this year,” or a range when a single year is sparse.
- Plugging dates from 2020–2025: plugging-end dates can be searched as a single year or range.
- Wells with reported geophysical logs: this finds an operator-reported log, not necessarily an available scan.
- Chip photos in Haldimand: combine a public photo-availability filter with a location.
The Well Map is an important discovery layer for wells, core photos and chip photos. Members can also use the PxTools Workbench map view to review their projects.
Back out one assumption
- Simplify the search: use only the most distinctive terms you are certain about, or try different terms.
- Remove the least certain Advanced Search field.
- For a land description, try a single trusted lot or concession before combining both, then add other fields when needed.
- Use the Well Map, a nearby licence, latitude/longitude or a street address.
- If you are searching by licence, check the full identifier: prefix letter, six digits and any known trailing letter. Append
Xto reveal the licence family when needed. - Try the PxTools KMZ, visit the physical Library, or ask Library staff.