What is the difference between "aliased" and "reported"?

Cleansing data is a necessity in order to properly do your analysis. Luckily, we have done the hard work for you.

Several fields in WellDatabase have a "reported" and "aliased" option. The simple explanation is that reported values appear exactly as the state regulatory agency has reported it and the aliased values are our cleansed & normalized values.

The reported values can have typos, inconsistencies, and more. They also contain valuable insights into the exact data as reported, especially when an operator uses multiple companies for it's operations in different areas. In addition to those types of insights, WellDatabase is dedicated to maintaining integrity in our dataset. We always want you to be able to trace our data back to the source. Also, by providing analytics by both reported and aliased, we provide transparency on how we do our aliasing.

The aliased value is the value we have cleaned and normalized. This value is consistent across our entire database and helps you identify properties when various states handle them differently. This is a necessity for doing large scale analytics.

It is important to note that in regard to operators, the aliased value is not a roll-up of subsidiaries.  This means that when a company is acquired by another, we do not change the operator to the new company name. That is unless the company files a change of operator form to update the company to the new name.

Here is a list of fields that we provide both a reported and aliased value:

  • Field
  • Primary Formation 
  • Current Operator
  • Original Operator
  • Well Bore Profile
  • Well Status
  • Well Type