How to find drilling permits near your Texas mineral rights

Updated 11 October 2026 · 4 min read

If you own Texas minerals, a new drilling permit nearby is often the first public sign that something is about to happen. The Railroad Commission of Texas (RRC) publishes permit records for free. Here is how to find the ones near your tract, using the RRC's own tools, and how to keep watching without checking by hand every day.

Step 1: Gather what describes your tract

Permit records describe locations the way Texas land records do. Before you search, pull these from your deed, lease, division order or county appraisal records:

• County. Every search starts here.
• Survey name and abstract number. For example "J. Smith Survey, Abstract 123". These are the most reliable way to match a permit to your land.
• Section and block, if your area uses them.
• Lease name and operator, if your minerals are leased. Permits are filed under a lease name.
• Approximate latitude and longitude of the tract, from a plat or a map app. Useful for "how close is it?" questions.

Step 2: Search the RRC Drilling Permit (W-1) Query

The RRC's Online Research Queries page links the Drilling Permit (W-1) Query, which it lists as updated nightly. The RRC's royalties FAQ explains that by entering a permit number you can review the documents filed with the permit application, and that you can search the database even if you don't know the number. Those records include plats and other documents that designate the acreage in a pooled unit, which is often what a mineral owner most wants to see.

Good searches to try:

• Your county plus the operator who holds your lease.
• Your county plus your lease name.
• Your county and a recent date range, then scan the survey and abstract on each result.

A note on manners: the RRC says its online queries are meant for individuals looking up specific information. If it detects an automated tool pulling volumes of data, it ends that user's session. Search by hand; don't point a script at it.

Step 3: Look at it on the map

The RRC's Public GIS Viewer shows oil, gas and pipeline data on a map and is updated nightly. It supports survey search, API number and address search, coordinate display and a user-defined radius tool. The RRC publishes short training videos for the survey search and coordinate features on its GIS Viewer page.

A practical routine: search your survey, turn on well locations, and use the radius tool to see what sits within a mile or two of your tract. Note the API numbers of anything new, then look those wells up in the permit query.

Step 4: Know what the bulk files offer

The RRC also publishes data sets for download, free of charge. For drilling permits these include:

These are fixed-width text files described in RRC manuals, so they're built for software rather than for reading. The RRC notes that converting the data, and choosing conversion tools, is the user's responsibility.

Step 5: Set up an alert instead of checking every day

In an active county a new permit can appear on any working day, and nobody wants to run the same search every morning. You have a few options:

• Check the W-1 Query on a schedule, for example every Monday, with the same saved search terms.
• Use a tool that reads the daily file for you and alerts you when something new matches your county, survey, abstract or operator.
• Ask your operator or landman. If your minerals are leased, the operator knows its own plans.

Reading what you find

• A permit isn't a well. A W-1 is approval to drill, re-enter or recomplete. The RRC's drilling permit FAQ says an operator has two years from the approval of the first filing to spud the well, after which the permit expires.
• Horizontal wells reach sideways. A horizontal wellbore can run a long way from its surface location, so look at the plat and the bottom-hole location, not just the surface pin.
• Pending is not approved. Some records are applications still under review.
• Check the official record before acting on anything from a third-party site, including ours.

What a permit could mean for your royalties is covered in what a new drilling permit near your land means for royalty owners.