The API number is the one identifier that follows a well through its entire life. Permits, completion reports, production, injection permits, and plugging reports all carry it. If you have an API number, you can find everything the state knows about that well.
The format
A full Texas API number looks like 42-337-34003. It has three parts:
- 42 is the state code for Texas. Every Texas well starts with 42.
- 337 is the county code. Each Texas county has a three-digit code assigned by the American Petroleum Institute. Montague County is 337, Reeves is 389, Midland is 329.
- 34003 is the unique well number within that county, assigned in sequence as permits are issued.
Together those ten digits identify one wellbore. RRC data files usually drop the state code and store the eight digits 33734003, and that is the form the API returns in apiNumber. Addresses carry all ten: the page for the well above is /wells/4233734003, because the state code is what keeps the address unique once wells from other states sit beside it.
Suffixes
Some records carry a two-digit suffix, for example 42-337-34003-01. The suffix identifies a distinct wellbore or completion event under the same base number: a sidetrack, a recompletion, or a re-entry. The original hole is suffix 00. Completion reports and wellbore records from the RRC's wellbore file use suffixes; permits generally do not.
On Petrora, a well page covers the base eight-digit number and everything filed under it, with the original hole preferred when several suffixes report the same thing, such as elevation.
When a permit has no API number
The permit record has a field for the API number, but it is all zeros on a small number of permits, mostly older or unusual filings where no number had been assigned when the file was built. Petrora shows those permits in county and operator lists but does not create a well page for the placeholder number.
County codes and offshore tracts
County codes include state offshore tracts. A permit in Texas state waters off Galveston will carry a county code for that tract rather than a land county, and the county name will read something like "Galveston-S" or "High Island-E". This is why Petrora's county count comes to more than the 254 land counties. See districts and counties.
Looking one up
- Go directly to
/wells/followed by the ten digits. The eight-digit form and the dashed form redirect there. - Permit tables show the API number in the last column, linked to the well page.
- The API returns the same record at
/v1/data/wells/{api}, which is what the connector cites.