The Railroad Commission, through its Oil and Gas Division, regulates the exploration, production, and transportation of oil and natural gas in Texas. Records present include permits for drilling, applications to drill, correspondence, memos, telegrams, transcripts from hearings and other legal documents, plats, maps, charts, graphs, and photographs. Dates covered are 1926-2000, the bulk dating 1926-1936. These are special permits issued by the Oil and Gas Division of the Railroad Commission of Texas (RRC) as exceptions to the Division's drilling rules. The permits were intended usually for individual wells rather than an entire field or reservoir. Examples include drilling with compressed air and drilling to offset drainage by neighboring wells. The majority of the records are hearing files concerning Rule 37, a rule that requires minimum distances between wells at drilling sites in order to protect field pressure and correlative rights. Rule 37 hearings are not regular hearings and they have their own unique docketing system. The files are individual applications by fee owners, leaseholders, and oil and gas companies for permits to drill on parcels of land too small to meet Rule 37's minimum distance requirements. An application to drill includes the following types of data - date, name of company or operator, name of lease, location of lease, field name, number of acres in lease, distance to nearest lease, depth of well, spacing pattern, density pattern, etc. The application to drill also notes if Rule 37 is involved, and if so, then the names and addresses of all offsetting operators or unleased mineral interest owners of each adjacent tract are provided, along with a plat. The correspondence is from the applicant to the RRC explaining why the exception should be granted. There can be waivers from adjacent property/lease holders of oil, gas or mineral rights, letters of objection from oil and gas companies, neighbors, etc. When there are serious objections, a hearing is held. Hearing transcripts may be present, along with permits to drill issued by the Railroad Commission. Records include a numerical list to the special permits and Rule 37 case files, produced by the Railroad Commission for cases # 1 to #8,999, listing the applicant, case number, well number, lease, county, and disposition of the request. Also present is an index on microfiche to the microfilmed Rule 37 cases or dockets, giving the docket number, microfilm reel, and frame on the reel where the docket appears. The first entry is case or docket # 8163, through # 247,949, with a few scattered cases listed after that. In addition to the special permit and Rule 37 case files for 1926-1936 (file numbers 2980-16,348), the Archives also holds the oversize exhibits from the Rule 37 hearings, which include maps, photographs, graphs, charts, etc., dating 1935-2000 (file numbers 8163-223,980). Most of the Rule 37 case files, from 1921 until about 2000 are on microfilm at the Railroad Commission. Cases from 2000 onward are still in their original paper format at the Railroad Commission. The Rule 37 oversize exhibits were not filmed. Not all of the Rule 37 cases or dockets had oversize exhibits, so files are not present for all case numbers. Hearing schedules are posted on the RRC site, see "http://www.rrc.state.tx.us/divisions/support-divisions/gc/hearschd/hearschd.html." This finding aid describes one series of the Railroad Commission of Texas records. See Railroad Commission of Texas: An Overview of Records (http://www.lib.utexas.edu/taro/tslac/20078/tsl-20078.html) for more records series. To prepare this inventory, the described materials were cursorily reviewed to delineate series, to confirm the accuracy of contents lists, to provide an estimate of dates covered, and to determine record types.
