RRC District 03 (Houston): counties, drilling permits and how to watch them
District 03 is one of the 13 oil and gas districts of the Railroad Commission of Texas (RRC), the state agency that issues drilling permits. It covers 29 counties and is served by the RRC's Houston district office.
What's in District 03
District 03 covers 29 counties around Houston and the upper Gulf coast, from Matagorda and Brazoria to Jefferson, Orange and Newton on the Louisiana line, and inland to Brazos, Grimes and Walker. Eight of them are on the RRC's Eagle Ford county list. Coastal counties border state waters; the RRC publishes separate offshore county codes, which Permit Watch does not track.
Eagle Ford Shale: a Cretaceous shale that the RRC describes as running from the Mexican border into East Texas within districts 1 through 6, roughly 50 miles wide and 400 miles long, at depths between 4,000 and 12,000 feet. The RRC lists 8 of this district's counties among its affected counties: Brazos, Burleson, Fayette, Grimes, Lee, Madison, Walker and Washington.
Counties in District 03
The RRC's county table assigns these 29 counties to District 03. Each name opens that county in Permit Watch:
Austin · Brazoria · Brazos · Burleson · Chambers · Colorado · Fayette · Fort Bend · Galveston · Grimes · Hardin · Harris · Jasper · Jefferson · Lee · Liberty · Madison · Matagorda · Montgomery · Newton · Orange · Polk · San Jacinto · Trinity · Tyler · Walker · Waller · Washington · Wharton
Recent permit activity
From the RRC's monthly summaries of drilling permits, completions and plugging reports processed, for this district:
| 2026 | Jul | Aug | Sep | 3 months |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Original drilling permits approved | 32 | 42 | 31 | 105 |
| of which new drills | 23 | 34 | 27 | 84 |
| Holes plugged | 48 | 37 | 49 | 134 |
Statewide, the RRC approved 2,147 original drilling permits in those three months, so District 03 accounted for about 5% (estimate: 105 ÷ 2,147), ranking 7 of the 12 districts the report lists. "Original" permits exclude amended permits; plugging counts are reports processed, not wells plugged that month. Monthly numbers swing, so use them as a sense of scale, not a forecast.
How to watch new permits in District 03
- Permit Watch: pick a county above to see permits from the RRC's daily drilling permit file, filter by survey, abstract, operator or lease, and subscribe to that county's free RSS feed. Permit Watch is new: until its first daily data load runs, county pages show "first data load pending".
- RRC Drilling Permit (W-1) Query: the official search, listed on the RRC's Research Queries page. The RRC asks that it be used by people, not automated tools.
- RRC Public GIS Viewer: a map of wells and permits, on the same Research Queries page.
In the RRC's daily permit file, the district is the one the operator reported on the W-1 application, stored as an internal code (OGA049M manual).
District office
RRC Houston office: 1919 N Loop West, Suite 620, Houston, TX 77008. Phone 713-869-5001. Email Houston@rrc.texas.gov. Source: the RRC Locations page.