Every well drilled in Texas starts with a drilling permit from the Railroad Commission of Texas (RRC), the state agency that regulates oil and gas. The application is Form W-1, and the record it creates is the backbone of almost everything else on Petrora: it is the first time a well gets an API number, an operator, a lease name, a county, and a target depth.
Who files, and for what
The operator files. An operator is a company registered with the RRC under an organization number (see operator numbers and the P-5). A permit is required before drilling a new well, but also before several kinds of work on an existing well. The application type on the permit says which:
| Code | Application type | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| 01 | Drill | A new well. The large majority of permits. |
| 02 | Deepen (below casing) | Drill deeper than the current casing shoe. |
| 03 | Deepen (within casing) | Drill deeper without going below existing casing. |
| 04 | Plug back | Abandon the deeper part of the hole and complete shallower. |
| 05 | Other | Work that fits none of the categories. |
| 06 | Amended drill | A change to a drill permit already issued. |
| 07 | Reenter | Go back into a plugged or abandoned wellbore. |
| 08 | Sidetrack | Kick off a new hole from the existing wellbore. |
| 09 | Field transfer | Move the well to a different regulatory field. |
| 11 | Drill (directional or sidetrack) | Older code for non-vertical drilling. |
| 12 | Drill (horizontal) | Older code for horizontal wells. |
| 13 | Sidetrack (horizontal) | Older code for a horizontal sidetrack. |
| 14 | Recompletion | Complete the well in a different zone. |
| 15 | Reclass | Change the well's classification, for example oil to gas. |
On Petrora, "Drill" and "Recompletion" together account for roughly 96 percent of all permits on file. Horizontal, directional, and sidetrack wells are flagged separately from the application type, because modern permits record them as attributes of a drill permit rather than as their own type.
The dates on a permit
A permit carries a sequence of dates, and reading them in order tells you where the well is in its life:
- Received. The day the RRC received the application. Operators often file weeks before they intend to drill.
- Issued. The day the RRC approved it. This is the date most people mean by "permit date". The gap between received and issued is usually days, sometimes weeks.
- Amended. The operator changed something after issuance, such as the location or the depth.
- Extended. The operator asked for more time before the permit expires.
- Spud. Drilling began. Not every permit records a spud date, and it is reported after the fact.
- Surface casing. The surface string was set, which is a regulatory milestone for groundwater protection.
- Cancelled, expired. The permit was withdrawn or ran out of time without being drilled.
The permit record also carries a one-letter well status code with its own date, which the RRC updates as work is reported: W is a final completion, D is a plugged dry hole, U an unsuccessful workover, and so on. Petrora labels the code on the permit page.
A drilling permit is valid for two years from the date of issuance. If the well is not spudded in that window and no extension is granted, it expires. A meaningful share of permits never become wells, which is why permit counts are a leading indicator of activity, not a measurement of it.
The permit number
Each permit has a permit number and a sequence number. The sequence number counts down from 99: the original filing is 99, the first amendment is 98, the second 97, and so on. One permit number can therefore appear several times, and the lowest sequence number is the current version. Petrora keeps every version, shows the current one on the permit page with the earlier ones beneath it, and lists the current one on the well page.
The API number on a permit is sometimes all zeros. That means the well had not yet been assigned one at the time of filing. Petrora does not treat those as wells.
How Petrora tracks permits
The RRC publishes a master file of all permits since 1966 and daily files of new and changed permits. Petrora loads the daily files every day and records the moment each permit first appeared in its database. That "first seen" timestamp is what orders the recent permits list and what drives alerts. It is more reliable than the issued date for "what is new", because the RRC's daily files publish issued permits a day or two after the fact, longer around weekends. See how current the data is.
Where to look
- Recent permits, filterable by county and window.
- Every well page lists all permits on that API number, with their application type and dates.
- Every operator page lists the operator's permits over the last twelve months.