BSEE WELL_ACTIVITY_CD · issue #1065 ·
WAR vintage 2026-02-19
WELL_ACTIVITY_CD domain at all.Every drilling-day number this repository publishes rests on a twelve-value activity code in BSEE's Well Activity Reports. Not one of those twelve values has a published definition for this field. This page states, code by code, what BSEE actually publishes, what we inferred, and what nobody knows — and links each claim to its source so you can check it rather than trust it.
0 of 12 codes defined by BSEE forWELL_ACTIVITY_CD
WELL_ACTIVITY_CDBOREHOLE_STAT_CD; the reuse is oursHow to read this page
Every statement on this page sits in exactly one of three tiers. The tier is carried by colour, by border style and by the words on the row — a reader who only skims should still never mistake an inference for a published fact.
Tier 1 · solid teal
BSEE's own words, for BOREHOLE_STAT_CD, quoted verbatim from its
field-values page. This is the only definitional material BSEE publishes anywhere
near this data.
Tier 2 · dashed amber
The token is published — for a different field. Reading it the same way in
WELL_ACTIVITY_CD is our inference, corroborated by
remark text and shown on every row. BSEE has never confirmed it.
Tier 3 · dotted grey, hatched
BSEE publishes nothing. The meaning cell is hatched and empty on purpose. You get the observed evidence and what would settle it — never a guess dressed as a definition. A thirteenth row covers the 882 wellbore-weeks that carry no code at all.
1 · The headline, made auditable
“BSEE publishes nothing” is a claim about absence, and absence is only credible if you can see where somebody looked. These are the 5 surfaces checked on 2026-07-28. Each links to the surface itself, so the negative result is reproducible in a browser rather than taken on trust.
| Surface checked | What it turned out to be | Go and check |
|---|---|---|
| eWell WAR Field Definitions | 23 rows, SN_WAR through BOTM_BLOCK_NUM. WELL_ACTIVITY_CD absent. | open ↗ |
| eWellWARRawData.zip | 8 .txt data members, no readme, no layout, no code table. | open ↗ |
| Form BSEE-0133 (Well Activity Report) | STATUS column carries no legend; no instruction sheet enumerates codes. | open ↗ |
| 30 CFR 250.743 | Prescribes narrative content and weekly cadence; no code vocabulary. | open ↗ |
| ONRR Appendix H | Different domain — reuses DRL/DSI/TA with OGOR-A production-month meanings; no PND. | open ↗ |
Result on every surface: no WELL_ACTIVITY_CD domain. 5 of 5 negative. | ||
WELL_ACTIVITY_CD exists only inside the raw dump
(mv_war_main_prop). BSEE ships no layout file, no readme and no
code table with it, and the field is absent from the eWell WAR field-definitions grid
that documents its 23 siblings. It is an undocumented internal column exposed by a raw
data release — which is not a criticism of BSEE, but it is a fact every consumer
of these numbers needs to know.
2 · Tier 1
BOREHOLE_STAT_CDOne relevant domain is published, at data.bsee.gov borehole field values ↗. It is a borehole status list, not an activity list, and this repository previously carried it in a directory named for the WAR field — which is how a borehole-status table came to be presented as the WAR activity vocabulary.
| Code | BSEE's definition, verbatim | Appears in WAR? |
|---|---|---|
| APD | Application for permit to drill | never |
| AST | Approved Sidetrack | never |
| BP | Bypass | never |
| CNL | Borehole is cancelled. The request to drill the well is cancelled after the APD or sundry has been approved | never |
| COM | Borehole Completed | yes — reuse inferred |
| CT | Core Test Well | never |
| DRL | Drilling Active | yes — reuse inferred |
| DSI | Drilling Suspended | yes — reuse inferred |
| PA | Permanently Abandoned | yes — reuse inferred |
| ST | Borehole Side Tracked | yes — reuse inferred |
| TA | Temporarily Abandoned | yes — reuse inferred |
| VCW | Volume Chamber Well | never |
This is a BOREHOLE STATUS domain, not an activity domain. Six WELL_ACTIVITY_CD tokens (WO, CHZ, PND, MPF, REC, TBK) do not appear in it at all, and six published borehole codes never appear in WAR.
The six that never appear in WAR are
APD, AST, BP, CNL, CT, VCW. The six WAR tokens absent
from this list are
WO, PND, CHZ, MPF, REC, TBK. Half the
observed WAR vocabulary is outside the borehole-status domain entirely: they are
related domains, not the same domain, and the published list must not be presented as
the WAR list.
3 · Tiers 2 and 3
WELL_ACTIVITY_CDFrequencies are the whole corpus — 361,756 wellbore-week
rows of mv_war_main_prop, WAR vintage 2026-02-19,
recomputed by this page's generator and cached at
war_activity_code_frequency.csv. Every row links to its line in the definitions
artifact. A blank-code row is included because 882 rows carry no value at all.
| Code | Meaning for WELL_ACTIVITY_CD | Rows | % of rows | Wellbores | Observed evidence | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Reuse inferred — the token is published, but for a different field · 6 codes BSEE defines these six tokens for BOREHOLE_STAT_CD. That WELL_ACTIVITY_CD reuses them with the same meaning is our reading of the evidence, not a BSEE statement. | ||||||
TA | Temporarily AbandonedBSEE wording, for BOREHOLE_STAT_CD | 102,889 | 28.44% | 13,661 | 39.7% 'NO ACTIVITY'; 42.6% carry no rig name. | boreholeFields ↗war_activity_codes.yml:89 |
PA | Permanently AbandonedBSEE wording, for BOREHOLE_STAT_CD | 88,805 | 24.55% | 15,728 | 40.3% 'NO ACTIVITY', 4.3% 'P&A'; 50.1% carry no rig name. | boreholeFields ↗war_activity_codes.yml:98 |
DRL | Drilling ActiveBSEE wording, for BOREHOLE_STAT_CD | 56,345 | 15.58% | 12,376 | 69.8% of DRL remarks contain 'DRILL'; 0.7% lack a rig name. | boreholeFields ↗war_activity_codes.yml:71 |
COM | Borehole CompletedBSEE wording, for BOREHOLE_STAT_CD | 46,010 | 12.72% | 9,685 | 24.5% 'COMPLET', 9.8% 'FRAC', 7.5% 'GRAVEL PACK' — highest of any code. | boreholeFields ↗war_activity_codes.yml:80 |
ST | Borehole Side TrackedBSEE wording, for BOREHOLE_STAT_CD | 6,416 | 1.77% | 5,907 | 17.7% 'SIDETRACK' — 6x any other code; 80% occur at the end of a well's sequence. | boreholeFields ↗war_activity_codes.yml:107 |
DSI | Drilling SuspendedBSEE wording, for BOREHOLE_STAT_CD | 2,180 | 0.60% | 665 | 32.3% 'SUSPEND', 7.3% 'NO OPERATION' — both highest of any code. | boreholeFields ↗war_activity_codes.yml:116 |
Unknown — BSEE publishes nothing, so this page shows no meaning · 6 codes + 1 blank-code row No BSEE domain contains these tokens. The meaning column is empty by design — filling it in is what created #1065. | ||||||
WO | no meaning publishednothing published — nothing shown | 26,150 | 7.23% | 4,844 | 26.3% 'TUBING', 19.5% 'PRODUC', 8.1% 'COIL'. BSEE's APM primary-op list has a WORKOVER value, but not this token. BSEE TDM would settle it ↓ | no BSEE sourcewar_activity_codes.yml:127 |
CHZ | no meaning publishednothing published — nothing shown | 19,822 | 5.48% | 3,139 | BSEE TDM would settle it ↓ | no BSEE sourcewar_activity_codes.yml:162 |
PND | no meaning publishednothing published — nothing shown | 8,826 | 2.44% | 3,815 | PND weeks are the busiest in the file: only 6.1% lack a rig name (vs TA 42.6%, PA 50.1%), the longest median remark of any code (923 chars), the highest BOP rate (53.9%), and the deepest mean DRILLING_MD (16,622 ft, highest of all twelve). DSI/TA/PA own the SUSPEND / NO ACTIVITY language; PND does not. Comparatively young: first WAR week 1999, against 1988-1997 for the codes that predate the eWell era. Median run of 1 week, sits mid-drilling (mean position 0.39), opens 2,135 wells. BSEE TDM would settle it ↓ | no BSEE sourcewar_activity_codes.yml:135 |
MPF | no meaning publishednothing published — nothing shown | 2,212 | 0.61% | 597 | BSEE TDM would settle it ↓ | no BSEE sourcewar_activity_codes.yml:168 |
REC | no meaning publishednothing published — nothing shown | 1,028 | 0.28% | 307 | BSEE TDM would settle it ↓ | no BSEE sourcewar_activity_codes.yml:174 |
| (blank) | no meaning publishednothing published — nothing shown | 882 | 0.24% | 581 | 882 rows spanning WAR weeks 1997-2002; 581 wellbores. no token was filed — nothing to define | no BSEE sourcewar_activity_codes.yml:187 |
TBK | no meaning publishednothing published — nothing shown | 191 | 0.05% | 64 | BSEE TDM would settle it ↓ | no BSEE sourcewar_activity_codes.yml:181 |
4 · The one that moves published economics
PND — everything we have, and no definitionPND is 2.44% of all WAR wellbore-weeks and touches 3,815 wellbores. It is the only undocumented code whose treatment changes numbers we publish, so it gets its own section — and that section still does not tell you what it means, because BSEE has not said.
PND weeks are the busiest in the file: only 6.1% lack a rig name (vs TA 42.6%, PA 50.1%), the longest median remark of any code (923 chars), the highest BOP rate (53.9%), and the deepest mean DRILLING_MD (16,622 ft, highest of all twelve). DSI/TA/PA own the SUSPEND / NO ACTIVITY language; PND does not. Comparatively young: first WAR week 1999, against 1988-1997 for the codes that predate the eWell era. Median run of 1 week, sits mid-drilling (mean position 0.39), opens 2,135 wells.
Materially moves published economics. If PND is active rig time, excluding it from completion understates. PND = 4,713 days against COM's 5,298 on the published 253-bore population.
2.44% of all WAR rows corpus-wide — NOT the 20-45% previously cited. Only 14% of wellbores use PND at all; among those, median 14.3% of that well's weeks, p90 40%. Rare fleet-wide, concentrated where it appears.
Best reading: a "pending / status not yet determined" residual dropdown option applied to weeks of real, rig-attended activity. NOT an idle or suspended code. This is inference; BSEE publishes nothing.
This paragraph is the reading of engineers looking at remark text, rig
names and depths. BSEE publishes no meaning for PND. Nothing in
this box may be used as a definition, mirrored into a code table, or shipped as a
label — that is exactly how PND | PENDING/UNKNOWN entered this
repository with its uncertainty flag stripped off
(#1065).
The row for PND in the table above therefore shows
no meaning published, and it will keep showing that until
BSEE answers. Source of record:
war_activity_codes.yml:135.
5 · What would settle it
No amount of further analysis of our own copy of the data can turn an inference into a definition. Only the data steward can.
TDM@bsee.gov
(BSEE Technical Data Management)WO, CHZ, PND, MPF, REC, TBK
(58,229 rows, 16.1% of the corpus)Do not ask about PND alone. The issue was raised about
PND because PND showed up in a rig-day total, but PND is 2.44% of
rows and the other five undocumented codes together are
13.66%. A reply that
defines only PND leaves the larger hole open and would let this page be quietly
retired while most of the vocabulary is still undocumented.
Cheaper avenue, still untried. BSEE's own eWell WAR report viewer
renders a STATUS cell per report. If that cell spells the status out
rather than printing the token, it is a published answer available today — but
it renders through an image pipeline, so it needs one manual browser check on a report
known to carry an undocumented code. Until somebody does that, or TDM replies, tier 3
stays empty.
6 · Follow it to source
| What | Where | Why you'd open it |
|---|---|---|
| Definitions artifact | war_activity_codes.yml |
The single source for these codes. Code imports it; this page is generated from it; nothing else may hold a second copy. |
| Observed frequency | war_activity_code_frequency.csv |
Row, percentage and wellbore counts per code, recomputed from the raw WAR tables at WAR vintage 2026-02-19. |
| Generator | build_war_activity_codes.py |
Builds this page. Refuses to run if any
unknown row acquires a label. |
| Pins | test_war_activity_codes.py |
Asserts the page is byte-regenerable, self-contained, and that no unknown code renders a meaning. |
| BSEE borehole field values | data.bsee.gov ↗ | The tier-1 source, quoted verbatim in §2. |
| Issue | #1065 | The open question and the BSEE query. |