Go To Well

Review by eFreeware

Most map apps treat an oil or gas well as an anonymous dot, if they show one at all. Go To Well takes the opposite approach: it is built around the well itself, letting you look one up by name or by its API number and then view or drive to it. That focus is what makes it stand out in a crowded navigation category.

This is a tool for people who already have a reason to find a specific well. Land and mineral owners checking on a property, field technicians and inspectors, surveyors, and anyone doing oil and gas research will recognize the need immediately. A general-purpose navigation app will get you to an address; this one is designed to get you to a well.

Looking up a well by name or API number

The core of the app is search. You can enter a well name, or you can use the API number, the identifier used across the US oil and gas industry to distinguish one well from another. Searching by name is the quicker route when you know roughly what you are after; the API number is the more precise one when you need to be certain you have the right well.

Once you have found a well, you can view it on a map and navigate to it. Search gives you the location, the map confirms it, and navigation takes you there, and that pairing is what makes the app useful in the field.

The app is free to download and shows no ads, which matters for something you might open while standing at a lease road. There are in-app purchases, so I would treat the free download as the starting point and decide from there.

Operator search and surrounding wells

Two features extend the search beyond a single well. You can display wells belonging to a particular operator on the map, which is useful when you want to see the spread of one company's activity rather than a single site. You can also display all the surrounding wells, which gives context to whatever you are looking at.

The combination is more interesting than either feature alone. Pull up one well, then switch to the surrounding view and you can see what else is in the area. Switch to an operator and you can see how a company's wells are distributed across the map. For anyone comparing acreage, tracking a producer, or planning a route that covers several sites, that is the substance of the app.

The app has been updated with a well site data refresh, so the underlying records are being maintained rather than left to age.

What the app expects from you

The requirements are modest. Go To Well is free, carries no ads, and runs on Android under the Maps & Navigation category. The in-app purchases are the one cost to be aware of before you commit.

The bigger requirement is knowledge. This is not an app that explains the oil and gas industry or helps you identify a well from the roadside. It works from identifiers you supply, which means you need a well name or an API number before the search can do anything for you. Someone with a lease number, a division order, or a plat in hand will get moving quickly; someone without one has nothing to type.

It is also specific to the United States, which follows from the API number system the app is built around. That is not a limitation so much as a definition of scope: this is a US oil and gas tool.

A field tool for people who know the well

I would keep a few things in mind before installing. Have your identifier ready, whether that is the well name or the API number, because the app is only as useful as the search term you give it. If you are heading out to a site, look the well up and check the map view before you leave, so you know what the approach looks like and can plan around it.

The operator and surrounding-well views are worth using together. Start with the single well you care about, then widen to the surrounding wells to see the neighborhood, or switch to an operator to see the wider pattern. That sequence gets more out of the app than searching one well at a time.

Go To Well has found a small, specific audience rather than a mass one, which fits what it does. If you regularly need to locate US oil and gas wells by name or API number, this is a focused tool worth trying. If you are looking for a general map or navigation app, its scope is narrower than that.

What's new in version 1.147

Well Site Data Update