[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"blog-\u002Fblog\u002Fpermian-basin-cross-state-title-work-texas-abstract-descriptions-and-new-mexico-plss-in-one-workflow":3},{"id":4,"title":5,"body":6,"cover":126,"date":127,"description":128,"draft":129,"extension":130,"meta":131,"navigation":134,"path":135,"seo":136,"stem":137,"tags":138,"__hash__":144},"blog\u002Fblog\u002Fpermian-basin-cross-state-title-work-texas-abstract-descriptions-and-new-mexico-plss-in-one-workflow.md","Permian Basin Cross-State Title Work: Texas Abstract Descriptions and New Mexico PLSS in One Workflow",{"type":7,"value":8,"toc":116},"minimark",[9,13,18,21,24,28,31,34,38,47,60,64,67,70,74,77,80,90,93,97,100,103],[10,11,12],"p",{},"A Permian Basin portfolio rarely respects the state line. A single deal can hold tracts in Reeves or Culberson County on the Texas side and Lea or Eddy County on the New Mexico side, and the two halves are described in two survey systems that share almost nothing. The Texas tracts read as Abstract, Block, and Survey. The New Mexico tracts read as section, township, and range. That is the core of Permian Basin Texas Abstract and New Mexico PLSS title work: one landman, one portfolio, two legal-description languages that most tools can only read one of. This post walks through why the split exists, how each system encodes a tract, and how to place both in a single workflow instead of maintaining two.",[14,15,17],"h2",{"id":16},"the-permian-basins-split-survey-geography","The Permian Basin's split survey geography",[10,19,20],{},"The Delaware and Midland sub-basins sit mostly under Texas, and Texas was never laid out on the federal rectangular grid. The eastern edge of the play crosses into southeastern New Mexico, which was. So a title examiner working a contiguous prospect can be reading Texas Abstract and Survey calls on one lease and New Mexico township and range calls on the next, for acreage that is physically adjacent. The descriptions look unrelated on paper even when the tracts touch.",[10,22,23],{},"This matters because the reconciliation is where errors hide. If you cannot place both descriptions on the same map, you are trusting a mental model of where the state line falls relative to each tract, and abstract numbers and section numbers both repeat across the region. Getting the two systems onto one grid is the whole job.",[14,25,27],{"id":26},"how-texas-abstract-block-and-survey-descriptions-work","How Texas Abstract, Block, and Survey descriptions work",[10,29,30],{},"Texas kept the survey framework it inherited as a republic and a state, administered through the General Land Office (GLO) rather than the federal Public Land Survey System. Instead of a uniform township and range grid, Texas land is identified by the original survey: a named grantee or railroad survey, a block, and an abstract number assigned by the county for tax and record purposes. A West Texas description often reads something like \"Abstract 355, Block 57, T&P RR Co. Survey, Reeves County,\" where the T&P survey blocks trace back to the railroad land grants that laid out much of the Permian.",[10,32,33],{},"Two things follow from this for title work. First, there is no township, range, or principal meridian to convert, so a converter built only for PLSS has nothing to resolve. Second, abstract numbers are unique only within a county, so the same abstract number appears in many counties across the state. A tool that resolves the Texas grid has to key on the county, block, and survey together, not the abstract number alone.",[14,35,37],{"id":36},"how-new-mexico-plss-works","How New Mexico PLSS works",[10,39,40,41,46],{},"Cross into Lea or Eddy County and the descriptions switch to the Public Land Survey System (PLSS), the federal rectangular survey used across most of the western United States. A New Mexico tract is described by section, township, range, and the ",[42,43,45],"a",{"href":44},"\u002Flearn\u002Fglossary\u002Fprincipal-meridian","principal meridian"," that anchors the grid, which for most of the state is the New Mexico Principal Meridian. A representative Lea County call reads \"Section 12, Township 20 South, Range 37 East, New Mexico Principal Meridian,\" and you can refine it to a quarter-section or a smaller aliquot part such as the NE¼ NE¼.",[10,48,49,50,54,55,59],{},"PLSS is regular where the Texas grid is not: townships are nominally six miles square, divided into 36 sections of roughly 640 acres, and each section subdivides cleanly into quarters and quarter-quarters. That regularity is why national converters handle it well, and it is also why they stop cold at the Texas line. If you want the mechanics of a PLSS call in full, the ",[42,51,53],{"href":52},"\u002Fguides\u002Fconvert-section-township-range-to-coordinates","section, township, and range guide"," covers how each part narrows the tract, and the ",[42,56,58],{"href":57},"\u002Fnew-mexico-plss-converter","New Mexico PLSS converter"," resolves the New Mexico side directly.",[14,61,63],{"id":62},"where-standard-plss-tools-stall","Where standard PLSS tools stall",[10,65,66],{},"The practical problem shows up the moment a portfolio straddles the line. A converter that only speaks PLSS resolves the New Mexico tracts and returns nothing for the Texas ones, so the Texas half falls back to hand work: opening the county appraisal viewer, searching the abstract, eyeballing the parcel, and transcribing a rough pin. That is slow, and it is easy to land in the wrong survey when abstract numbers repeat. Worse, the two halves of the deal now live in two different places, on two different maps, with no shared coordinate frame to check them against each other.",[10,68,69],{},"For cross-state title work, the missing piece is not a better PLSS converter or a better Texas viewer. It is one tool that reads both description systems and returns both on the same grid, so the Texas tract and the New Mexico tract can be compared as neighbors rather than reconciled from memory.",[14,71,73],{"id":72},"resolving-both-descriptions-in-one-workflow","Resolving both descriptions in one workflow",[10,75,76],{},"Township America resolves the Texas Abstract, Block, and Survey (GLO) grid directly to coordinates, in the same search box that handles PLSS, and this grid resolver is free on every plan. No other PLSS converter covers the Texas grid, which is what makes the cross-state case work in one place.",[10,78,79],{},"In practice the workflow is two entries and no tool switch:",[81,82,83,87],"ul",{},[84,85,86],"li",{},"Enter the Texas tract, for example \"Abstract 355, Block 57, T&P RR Co. Survey, Reeves County.\" The Texas grid resolver returns coordinates and draws the survey on the map, sourced from Texas GLO survey records.",[84,88,89],{},"Enter the New Mexico tract, for example \"Section 12, Township 20 South, Range 37 East, New Mexico Principal Meridian.\" PLSS resolution places it down to the aliquot part (1\u002F256, about 10 acres), calculated from official BLM survey data.",[10,91,92],{},"Because each lookup returns a full GeoJSON polygon of the actual survey or section boundary, not just a center point, you see the true footprint of each tract and where the two sit relative to the state line. Both halves of the portfolio now share one coordinate frame, which is the thing hand reconciliation never gives you. If you run many tracts at once, the Business plan adds batch conversion with structured exports (CSV, KML, Shapefile, GeoJSON, DXF), so a full prospect area of mixed Texas and New Mexico descriptions resolves in one pass.",[14,94,96],{"id":95},"what-the-texas-pack-adds-on-the-resolved-grid","What the Texas pack adds on the resolved grid",[10,98,99],{},"Placing the tracts is the title step. Once they are on the grid, the Texas data pack ($100 a month, attaching to Pro or Business) overlays the paid Texas layers on the free resolver: GLO leases across all classes and pooled units, Permanent School Fund and state-agency lands, Railroad Commission (RRC) active wells, T-4 pipelines, W-1 pending permits, and RRC lease production history in barrels of oil equivalent. On a Permian tract that often means checking whether state acreage sits in the chain and what the offset operators are already running, read against the same boundary you just resolved rather than a separate map.",[10,101,102],{},"The Texas pack covers the Texas side, since GLO and the RRC are Texas agencies. New Mexico production and federal energy layers come from the Energy pack, which carries New Mexico wells alongside Colorado, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Wyoming. A working cross-state Permian desk that wants data on both sides stacks both packs on one plan, and stacked packs roll up into a single Combined Parcel Report PDF.",[10,104,105,106,110,111,115],{},"The takeaway for cross-state title work is narrow and worth stating plainly: resolve the Texas Abstract description and the New Mexico PLSS description in the same tool, get both tracts on one grid as real polygons, and stop reconciling the state line by hand. The Texas grid resolver is free on every plan, so the title step costs nothing to try; the paid layers come in only when you want the lease and well data on top. See the ",[42,107,109],{"href":108},"\u002Findustries\u002Foil-and-gas","oil and gas industry page"," for the full layer list, or compare tiers on the ",[42,112,114],{"href":113},"\u002Fpricing","pricing page",".",{"title":117,"searchDepth":118,"depth":118,"links":119},"",2,[120,121,122,123,124,125],{"id":16,"depth":118,"text":17},{"id":26,"depth":118,"text":27},{"id":36,"depth":118,"text":37},{"id":62,"depth":118,"text":63},{"id":72,"depth":118,"text":73},{"id":95,"depth":118,"text":96},"\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fpermian-basin-cross-state-title-work-texas-abstract-descriptions-and-new-mexico-plss-in-one-workflow\u002Fcover.webp","2026-08-07T10:00:00Z","Permian Basin Texas Abstract and New Mexico PLSS title work in one workflow: resolve both survey systems, place every tract, and read the Texas pack layers.",false,"md",{"author":132,"category":133},"Township America","guides",true,"\u002Fblog\u002Fpermian-basin-cross-state-title-work-texas-abstract-descriptions-and-new-mexico-plss-in-one-workflow",{"title":5,"description":128},"blog\u002Fpermian-basin-cross-state-title-work-texas-abstract-descriptions-and-new-mexico-plss-in-one-workflow",[139,140,141,142,143],"oil-and-gas","texas","new-mexico","permian-basin","title-work","rMQKQSi2BEmHqg5N2CilUxNVLZ7TOt96TN_DCMoNXhs"]