Louisiana Orphan Oil & Gas Wells (SONRIS / OSR)

Search every Act 404 orphan well in Louisiana's official SONRIS inventory by parish, operator, and orphan date. Turn on monitor mode and schedule it to get only newly orphaned wells and wells whose orphan status moved since your last run.

What does it do?

This Actor queries the public Office of Conservation well layer that the Louisiana Department of Energy and Natural Resources publishes through SONRIS GIS, and keeps only wells whose status code is 23 or 26 -- the same statuses the state's Orphan Wells By Parish report uses. It returns one clean record per orphan well with the API number, operator of record, parish, field, orphan status and dates, depths, coordinates, legal location, and direct links to the SONRIS well profile and scanned documents.

It reads the official public ArcGIS endpoint, so there is no browser, no proxy, and no login involved. About 6,300 orphan wells are available statewide, from historic Act 404 listings to wells orphaned this year.

Who is it for?

• Plug-and-abandon and Oilfield Site Restoration contractors chasing IIJA and state OSR work.
• Environmental consultants and site assessors who need the current orphan inventory by parish.
• Landmen, parish governments, and mineral owners tracking orphan liabilities near specific tracts.
• Anyone who would otherwise page through the SONRIS orphan wellsite list by hand.

Input

Field	Type	Description
parishes	list of parishes	Pick from the 64 Louisiana parishes, spelled as SONRIS spells them, for example CADDO, MOREHOUSE, or CAMERON. Empty means every parish.
operatorContains	text	Case-insensitive text that must appear in the operator of record. Letters, digits, spaces, and & . , ' ( ) / -, up to 80 characters.
orphanedSince	date	Earliest well status date, YYYY-MM-DD, which is when SONRIS recorded the well as orphaned.
orphanedUntil	date	Latest well status date, YYYY-MM-DD, inclusive.
maxResults	number	Most orphan wells to read in one run. Default 1000, maximum 50,000.
onlyNewOrChanged	true or false	Monitor mode. Outputs only wells that are new or changed since the previous run of the same search.

Wells come newest status date first. Wells with no status date on file come last, newest serial number first.

Sample input:

{
  "parishes": ["CADDO", "MOREHOUSE"],
  "orphanedSince": "2020-01-01"
}

Output

Each orphan well is one dataset item. This is a real record shape from SONRIS:

{
  "wellSerialNumber": 10677,
  "apiNumber": "17-067-00637-00-00",
  "apiNumber14": "17067006370000",
  "wellName": "CARBONS CONSOLIDATED FEE",
  "wellNumber": "002",
  "operator": "LARRY A. JONES",
  "parish": "MOREHOUSE",
  "field": "MONROE",
  "status": "ACT 404 ORPHAN WELL-ENG NO PRODUCT SPECIFIED",
  "statusCode": "23",
  "statusDate": "2016-07-20",
  "orphanedFlag": true,
  "orphanStatusCode": "23",
  "orphanStatusDate": "2016-07-20",
  "permitDate": "1927-02-17",
  "spudDate": null,
  "completionDate": null,
  "measuredDepthFt": 2145,
  "trueVerticalDepthFt": null,
  "latitude": 32.714346401,
  "longitude": -92.059071417,
  "coordinatesInLouisiana": true,
  "section": "016",
  "township": "20N",
  "range": "04E",
  "wellProfileUrl": "https://sonlite.dnr.state.la.us/ords/apex/r/sonris_pub/sonris_data_portal/well-profile?clear=CR,9000&ig[ig_master]_well_serial_num=10677",
  "documentsUrl": "https://sonlite.dnr.state.la.us/ords/r/sonris/ucmsearch/finddocuments?qtype=eq&idx=xwellserialnumber&val=10677",
  "sourceUpdatedAt": "2026-10-27T09:05:36+00:00",
  "changeType": "notTracked"
}

You can download results as JSON, CSV, Excel, or XML, or read them through the Apify API.

• statusCode 23 and 26 are the Act 404 orphan statuses this Actor keeps. status is the plain-English legend from SONRIS.
• statusDate is when SONRIS recorded the current status, which for these wells is the orphan date. orphanStatusCode and orphanStatusDate are the dedicated orphan fields when SONRIS fills them.
• changeType is new or changed in monitor mode and notTracked otherwise.
• Dates are calendar days in Louisiana time. A value the source stores in an unusable form comes through as null instead of stopping the run.
• coordinatesInLouisiana is true or false when coordinates are present and null when they are missing.

Monitor mode

Set onlyNewOrChanged to true and add a schedule, for example every weekday at 7 AM Central. The Actor remembers each well's status, status code, status date, and orphan status fields for that exact search in a named key-value store. The first run outputs every matching orphan well as new. Later runs output only newly orphaned wells and wells whose orphan status moved. Unchanged wells are skipped and you are not charged for them.

A few things are worth knowing before you rely on it:

• History is keyed on the parishes, operator text, and orphan dates of the search. Parish order and letter case do not matter, and neither does maxResults. If you change any of those filters, including a "since" date that you move forward each week, the Actor starts a fresh history and reports every matching well as new again. Keep the dates fixed for a monitor.
• Each run only scans the newest maxResults orphan wells of the search, so set it high enough to cover every well you want watched.
• An operator-of-record change on its own does not count as a change.
• A well that is no longer orphaned, for example after it is plugged and its status leaves 23/26, drops out of the search and is not reported. Compare datasets between runs if you need to see removals.
• If the saved history record is ever unreadable, the run fails without charging rather than reporting every well as new again. Delete that record from the louisiana-orphan-wells-monitor store to start over.
• Two schedules running the same search at the same time share one history, and the run that finishes last wins.

Pricing

This Actor uses pay-per-event pricing.

• Orphan well record: $5.00 per 1,000 wells delivered to your dataset ($0.005 each).
• Actor start: Apify's standard start event ($0.00005).
• There is no separate charge per dataset item.

A daily orphan monitor for a few parishes usually delivers only a handful of wells, so it costs pennies a month. A full statewide pull of about 6,300 orphan wells costs about $31.50, and you can cap any run with Apify's maximum charge setting. The Actor stops cleanly when your limit is reached, and you are only charged for wells that actually reach your dataset.

Estimated compute cost

Default memory is 512 MB. A small filtered run (about 20 records) typically finishes in under a minute and costs well under $0.01 in Apify compute on top of the event charges. A full statewide pull of about 6,300 wells is usually a few minutes at 512 MB, on the order of $0.05 to $0.15 in compute depending on SONRIS response times, plus about $31.50 in orphan-well-record events.

Data source and freshness

Data comes from the SONRIS GIS Office of Conservation well layer published by the Louisiana Department of Energy and Natural Resources. The Actor keeps wells with status codes 23 and 26, matching the state's Orphan Wells By Parish listing. The map layer is refreshed by the state and can trail internal SONRIS updates by days, so very recent orphan designations may appear later than they do in the state's own reports. sourceUpdatedAt tells you when the state last updated each row.

Some source rows carry coordinates outside Louisiana because of data-entry errors. The Actor keeps the values as published and sets coordinatesInLouisiana to false so you can filter or fix them.

If SONRIS is down or its firewall blocks the request, the run fails with a short message and keeps every well it already delivered. Run it again later.

Source endpoint: https://sonris-gis.dnr.la.gov/arcgis/rest/services/DNRSvc/OC/MapServer/0

Is it legal to use this data?

The Actor reads public records that the State of Louisiana publishes for anyone to view, through the same public endpoint that powers the SONRIS map viewer. The data is provided as is, without any guarantee that it is complete or current. It is not a title opinion, site assessment, or legal advice, so confirm anything important against the official SONRIS records and the Oilfield Site Restoration Program. This Actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the State of Louisiana.

FAQ

Do I need a SONRIS account or API key? No. The Actor reads the same public endpoint that powers the SONRIS map viewer.

How do I find the right parish spelling? Pick parishes from the list in the input form. SONRIS spells them in upper case without periods, for example ST LANDRY, EAST BATON ROUGE, or DE SOTO.

Does this include every well with ORPHANED_FLAG = Y? No. The Actor follows the state's Orphan Wells By Parish definition and keeps status codes 23 and 26 only. Wells that still carry an orphaned flag after their status moved off 23/26 are left out on purpose.

How is this different from the Louisiana Oil & Gas Wells Actor? That Actor searches the full SONRIS well inventory. This one is limited to the Act 404 orphan inventory and adds orphan-specific fields for OSR and P&A workflows.