WellWiki.org provides data, news and history on oil and gas wells from the United States and Canada. Currently, the site provides data on some 420,000 wells in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, with a special emphasis on unconventional shale wells in the Marcellus Formation. By September 2014, WellWiki is expected to include data on 600,000 wells in the Appalachian Basin of North America, encompassing all known wells in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio and New York. From there, coverage will extend to Alberta, British Columbia and Texas. Eventually, WellWiki is expected to cover the estimated 4+ million wells drilled in North America since the Drake well in 1859.

Designed by a team from the University of Alberta, Canada, and led by Joel Gehman, a professor of strategic management and organization, together with Dror Etzion, a professor of strategy and organizations at McGill University, Canada, WellWiki seeks to foster improved transparency and public dialog by providing up-to-date information in an easily-searchable, user-friendly fashion.

WellWiki uses publicly-available data collected from state oil and gas agencies as well as other published sources. These are compiled such that individual wells can be located on a map and then linked with data on operators, waste facilities, well pads, impoundments, violations, and other related pages. The goal is to provide visitors with the tools and information necessary to locate any wells of interest, provide them with the details of these wells and any related events, a particular spill or leak, or the companies involved with oil and gas exploration and development in a given area. WellWiki’s comprehensive MediaWiki-style linking system and searching capabilities make it a very useful resource for information on unconventional shale development and hydraulic fracturing.

WellWiki is intended for all people to view and search, if they are interested. Those that want to may also sign up to become a contributor. Similar rules for citations and attributions on Wikipedia apply on WellWiki. All points of view are regarded, so long as proper citation is included. In short, the goal of WellWiki is to become the Wikipedia of oil and gas wells worldwide.