Frequently Asked Questions

The colors indicate the status category:

• Operating: The unit has commercial production of oil/gas (that is, quantities that are being sold to market).
• In Development: Following discovery, the process of moving toward commercial production has begun. This means that a company is planning to develop the project, as evidenced by one or more of the following criteria being reached: the company has applied for approval for commercial production (if needed in the jurisdiction), the project has reached the Final Investment Decision (FID), a final environmental impact statement has been published, and/or the drilling of development (not appraisal) wells and/or adding takeaway capacity (infrastructure such as pipelines, storage tanks, etc.) to enable commercial production has begun.
• Discovered: A unit is typically considered to be discovered when there has been a well drilled into a particular formation, and it yielded some significant quantity of oil and/or gas. Discovered units are not necessarily economic to exploit.
• Shut In: Operations temporarily shut down; may be restarted.

Each unit location is marked “exact” or “approximate.” In the case of exact coordinates, locations are either specifically identified on a mapping service such as Google Maps, Open Street Maps, etc., or gathered from company or government documentation. If the location of a unit is not known, Global Energy Monitor identifies the most accurate location possible based on available information.

To find out the coordinates of a location and whether a location is exact or approximate, click on the location dot, select the wiki page, and look under “Project Details.”

GOGET only includes publicly available data on extraction sites which produce more than 1 million boe/y and/or have reserves greater than 25 million boe. Data on areas below that threshold, and areas where publicly available data is not available, are not included.

GOGET relies on the government or company providing information to define the unit being described. In most cases, this unit is defined as a “field.” However, there are other possibilities. Data is sometimes reported at the well, asset, complex, block, or basin level. The “well” designation is generally applied when the unit is so newly discovered that information is only available at the “well” level, as no field has yet been identified. The “asset” designation indicates the portion of a field operated by a particular company. “Asset” is commonly used for unconventional production where unique field name and operator combinations were deemed an “Asset” and entered into GOGET.

There are many definitions of reserves (meaning, how much oil and gas is remaining in a field to extract). Proved reserves (aka 1P) are the most commonly reported category, particularly for financial evaluations of companies. But for understanding the long-term potential for oil/gas extraction, broader categories are more useful, in particular 2P (proved and probable) reserves. However, companies and countries define and report reserves differently. GOGET provides the reserves data and classifications as reported by the original sources.

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The tracker was designed and produced by Global Energy Monitor, a network of researchers seeking to provide open access to information that is essential to building a sustainable energy future.

Please refer to the Download Data page for citation guidance.