RRC District 04 (Corpus Christi): counties, drilling permits and how to watch them
District 04 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 15 counties and is served by the RRC's Corpus Christi district office.
What's in District 04
District 04 covers 15 counties of the lower Gulf coast and South Texas, from Nueces and San Patricio down to Cameron and Hidalgo in the Rio Grande Valley, and west to Webb, Zapata and Duval. Webb County is the district's one county on the RRC's Eagle Ford list.
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 1 of this district's counties among its affected counties: Webb.
Counties in District 04
The RRC's county table assigns these 15 counties to District 04. Each name opens that county in Permit Watch:
Aransas · Brooks · Cameron · Duval · Hidalgo · Jim Hogg · Jim Wells · Kenedy · Kleberg · Nueces · San Patricio · Starr · Webb · Willacy · Zapata
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 | 9 | 10 | 13 | 32 |
| of which new drills | 8 | 8 | 11 | 27 |
| Holes plugged | 19 | 21 | 31 | 71 |
Statewide, the RRC approved 2,147 original drilling permits in those three months, so District 04 accounted for about 1% (estimate: 32 ÷ 2,147), ranking 11 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 04
- 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 Corpus Christi office: 10320 I-37, Corpus Christi, TX 78410. Phone 361-242-3113. Email Corpus_Christi@rrc.texas.gov. Source: the RRC Locations page.