The Railroad Commission of Texas (RRC) initially had jurisdiction over the rates and operations of railroads, terminals, wharves and express companies. Today the Railroad Commission of Texas regulates the exploration, production, and transportation of oil and natural gas and surface mining for coal, uranium, and iron ore gravel. Its statutory role is to prevent waste of the state's natural resources, to protect the correlative rights of different interest owners, to prevent pollution, and to provide safety in matters such as hydrogen sulfide. These minutes are the official record of the meetings of the Railroad Commission of Texas and document the actions and orders of the commissioners, covering the years 1891-2004. Other items include notices of hearings, orders, circulars, and special notices. Matters before the Commission documented in the minutes include the establishment of and changes in railroad freight and passenger rates, train schedules, tariff classifications, requests to discontinue passenger stations, amendments to rules, complaints, and other railroad issues; contested oil and gas cases, complaints on violated Commission oil and gas rules (e.g. operator not in compliance with plugging rules), changes in policies and procedures, amendments to rules, resolution of complaints filed against the Commission, and other related matters concerning oil and gas regulation (production/permitting, oil field clean up, site remediation, compliance, etc.); issues concerning the operation of motor vehicles; gas utility regulation; liquefied petroleum gas and other gas services issues; regulation of pipelines; and surface mining and reclamation issues. Minutes from 1891 to the end of the 1910s are primarily concerned with railroad rates and regulations. Beginning in 1917 with pipeline regulation, the minutes begin to record the Commission's activities in other areas. The establishment of the Oil and Gas Division, the Gas Utilities (later Gas Services) Division, and the Motor Transportation Division expanded greatly the Commission's jurisdiction and the minutes reflect these changes. The activities of the divisions added large dockets of cases, hearings and orders to the minutes. These divisions came to dominate the meetings of the Commission and the minutes as railroad regulation decreased and other areas of regulation became more complex. Topics covered in the minutes include regulation and operation of railroads, including railroad companies' annual operations, rail construction, and setting freight and passenger rates; oil and gas activities, including the issuance of orders governing drilling of oil and gas wells and the operation of the fields; oil and gas conservation and safety, including spacing of wells; disposal of oil and gas waste and pollution cleanup efforts; natural gas issues, include rate hearings, deregulation, and odorization of natural gas; and issuance of permits or certificates of convenience to operate commercial motor vehicles on public highways. The minutes from 1891 to 1972 are in bound volumes and from 1973 to 2004 on microfilm. During the microfilming process Reel 81 was skipped. The microfilm through 1996 exists only as master negatives and is stored offsite, so paper use copies of the minutes have been retained for 1979-1995. The microfilm reels for 1997-2004 are use copies stored at the Archives building and are available for research use. Each of the pre-1920 volumes of minutes have a brief subject index in the front of the volume. The post-1920 volumes, the microfilm, and the paper sets of minutes do not have indexes. Orders, circulars and other attachments are only found in the microfilm copies of the minutes. Agendas and minutes from 1998 to the present are posted on the Railroad Commission's website, see http://www.rrc.state.tx.us/meetings/conferences/index.php. This finding aid describes a single 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.
