“Putting millions and millions of oil and gas records online is a win-win for the public and the agency.”
Texas Insider Report: AUSTIN, Texas – With more than 15 million records digitized in the past year, the Railroad Commission of Texas now has 83.4 million oil and gas records that can be searched and viewed online from anywhere in the world.
The enormous amount of work is part of the RRC’s ongoing success increasing transparency and making the vast trove of information held at the agency easily available to the public.
As the oldest regulatory agency in Texas, the RRC has oil and gas records dating back to the 1930’s on paper in district offices and on microfilm. The agency has been digitizing those records and placing the images online for several years, allowing anyone with internet access to view them.
Documents that have been digitized include oil and gas production records and well completion records that contain information such as well depths and producing fields of a well. These records are used often by researchers, landowners, royalty owners, energy companies and public information requesters.
“Putting millions and millions of oil and gas records online is a win-win for the public and the agency,” said Danny Sorrells, RRC Deputy Executive Director. “Not only does it give the public easy access to historical information dating back almost 100 years, but our staff can now devote the time they would have spent tracking those records for the public for other tasks at the agency.”
District office paper records and microfilm records that have been digitized can be found on this RRC webpage:
https://www.rrc.texas.gov/resource-center/research/research-queries/imaged-records/imaged-records-menu/
