[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"blog-\u002Fblog\u002Ftexas-rrc-w-1-pending-permits-monitoring-new-drilling-activity-near-a-tract-with-the-texas-pack":3},{"id":4,"title":5,"body":6,"cover":118,"date":119,"description":120,"draft":121,"extension":122,"meta":123,"navigation":126,"path":127,"seo":128,"stem":129,"tags":130,"__hash__":136},"blog\u002Fblog\u002Ftexas-rrc-w-1-pending-permits-monitoring-new-drilling-activity-near-a-tract-with-the-texas-pack.md","Texas RRC W-1 Pending Permits: Monitoring New Drilling Activity Near a Tract with the Texas Pack",{"type":7,"value":8,"toc":108},"minimark",[9,13,18,21,24,28,31,44,47,51,60,63,66,70,73,76,80,88,92,95],[10,11,12],"p",{},"A Texas mineral buyer about to close on a tract, or a landman running title before a lease signs, faces a question that historical data cannot answer: is an operator about to drill next door? Active well maps and production records look backward. They tell you what a lease has already produced, not what is coming. The earliest public signal that a new well is on the way is a Texas RRC W-1 permit, the drilling permit application an operator files with the Railroad Commission before it moves a rig onto a tract. Watching for those filings near a parcel is the difference between valuing it on today's production and valuing it on what the neighbors are about to do. This post covers what a W-1 permit is, why pending filings matter, and how to monitor them against a Texas tract.",[14,15,17],"h2",{"id":16},"what-a-texas-rrc-w-1-permit-actually-is","What a Texas RRC W-1 permit actually is",[10,19,20],{},"Form W-1 is the Railroad Commission's Application for Permit to Drill, Recomplete, or Re-Enter. No new Texas well is drilled legally without one. When an operator wants to drill, it files a W-1 that names the operator, the lease and well, the field and target formation, the county, and the proposed surface location. Until the RRC approves it and the well is actually drilled, the filing sits as a pending permit: a public statement of intent to drill, with a location attached.",[10,22,23],{},"That last part is what makes it useful. A pending W-1 is a forward-looking record. It exists before the well does, which is exactly when the information can still change a decision.",[14,25,27],{"id":26},"why-pending-permits-matter-more-than-a-well-map","Why pending permits matter more than a well map",[10,29,30],{},"Active wells and RRC lease production history describe the past and present of a tract. A pending W-1 describes the near future. For three groups in Texas, that timing is the whole point:",[32,33,34,38,41],"ul",{},[35,36,37],"li",{},"Mineral buyers pricing an offer want to know whether an operator has already filed to drill an offset. A permit next door can raise the value of the minerals under the tract you are buying, and it is public before the trade closes.",[35,39,40],{},"Landmen running title need to know about planned drilling that could trigger offset or continuous-development obligations. A pending permit on the adjacent lease is a fact you want in the file, not a surprise after signing.",[35,42,43],{},"Ranch sellers and their brokers care about surface impact. A W-1 with a proposed location near the homestead or a water source changes how a buyer reads the property, and it is better disclosed than discovered.",[10,45,46],{},"In each case the question is the same: has the RRC received a permit application for a tract near this one? Answering it means putting the pending permits on the same map as the parcel.",[14,48,50],{"id":49},"how-to-view-w-1-pending-permits-on-a-texas-tract","How to view W-1 pending permits on a Texas tract",[10,52,53,54,59],{},"Most Texas tracts are described by Abstract, Block, and Survey rather than by section, township, and range, because most of Texas was never laid out on the rectangular survey grid. That is the first hurdle: a national PLSS converter cannot place a Texas Abstract and Survey description at all. Township America resolves the Texas Abstract, Block, and Survey (GLO) grid directly to coordinates, free on every plan, in the same box that handles PLSS. You can run that resolution from the ",[55,56,58],"a",{"href":57},"\u002Fconverters","converters page",".",[10,61,62],{},"Start by placing the tract. Enter the description, for example \"Abstract 217, Block 10, H. & T.C. RR Co. Survey, Midland County,\" and the resolver returns coordinates and the parcel. Because it returns a full GeoJSON polygon of the survey rather than a single center point, you see the actual footprint of the tract, which is what a proximity read depends on.",[10,64,65],{},"Next, add the Texas pack. It carries eighteen Texas data layers on top of the free grid, one of which is W-1 pending permits. With the pack on, pending permit filings near the resolved boundary appear on the map alongside the tract, so you are reading them against the real parcel rather than against a separate RRC query keyed by lease and API number.",[14,67,69],{"id":68},"reading-the-permit-against-the-tract","Reading the permit against the tract",[10,71,72],{},"Once the pending permits are on the map, the W-1 tells you three things worth acting on: who is planning to drill, what they are targeting, and how close the proposed location sits to your tract. The operator on the filing is the party you may end up negotiating with or competing against. The target field and formation point to the zone the play is chasing, which is context for whether a filing next door is likely to touch the same reservoir under your parcel. And the proposed location, read against the resolved polygon, tells you whether the permit is a true offset or just somewhere in the county.",[10,74,75],{},"A single pending W-1 near a tract is a signal, not a certainty. Permits get filed and never drilled, and a proposed location can move. Treat one as evidence that an operator intends to drill, weigh it with the production nearby, and confirm status with the RRC before you rely on it in a transaction.",[14,77,79],{"id":78},"combine-permits-with-active-wells-and-production-history","Combine permits with active wells and production history",[10,81,82,83,87],{},"A pending W-1 is one layer of the activity picture, not the whole of it. The Texas pack also overlays RRC active wells and RRC lease production history in barrels of oil equivalent (BOE), plus a production heatmap that shows where a lease is producing and where it is not. Read together, the three answer different questions about the same tract: production history shows what the ground has already made, active wells show what is producing now, and W-1 pending permits show what is about to be drilled. Layering all three against the resolved boundary is how you build a complete read in one place instead of reconciling three RRC exports by hand. The related walkthrough on ",[55,84,86],{"href":85},"\u002Fblog\u002Fpermian-basin-lease-due-diligence-using-the-texas-pack-for-rrc-wells-production-history-and-active-permits","Permian Basin lease due diligence"," works through that combined check on a straddling tract.",[14,89,91],{"id":90},"when-to-add-t-4-pipeline-proximity","When to add T-4 pipeline proximity",[10,93,94],{},"A new permit raises a follow-on question: if the well is drilled, how does the production leave the tract? The Texas pack shows T-4 pipelines near the parcel, which is your first read on takeaway capacity and on whether a gathering line already runs close by. A pending W-1 with a T-4 line nearby reads differently from a permit in an area with no visible takeaway, because that context affects how quickly a new well can actually sell what it produces. When you weigh a permit's impact on tract value, check the T-4 layer alongside it rather than after the fact.",[10,96,97,98,102,103,107],{},"Monitoring drilling activity near a Texas tract comes down to one move: resolve the parcel once, then read the forward-looking layer against it. The free Texas grid resolver places the Abstract and Survey description that national PLSS tools cannot, and the Texas pack adds the RRC W-1 pending permits, active wells, production history, and T-4 pipelines on top of that same parcel. The pack is $100 a month and attaches to Pro ($20) or Business ($40), so a working Texas desk runs at $120 or $140 a month with the RRC layers turned on. See the ",[55,99,101],{"href":100},"\u002Findustries\u002Foil-and-gas","oil and gas industry page"," for the full Texas layer list, or compare tiers on the ",[55,104,106],{"href":105},"\u002Fpricing","pricing page",". Watch the permits before the rig moves, not after.",{"title":109,"searchDepth":110,"depth":110,"links":111},"",2,[112,113,114,115,116,117],{"id":16,"depth":110,"text":17},{"id":26,"depth":110,"text":27},{"id":49,"depth":110,"text":50},{"id":68,"depth":110,"text":69},{"id":78,"depth":110,"text":79},{"id":90,"depth":110,"text":91},"\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Ftexas-rrc-w-1-pending-permits-monitoring-new-drilling-activity-near-a-tract-with-the-texas-pack\u002Fcover.webp","2026-08-18T10:00:00Z","Use a Texas RRC W-1 permit to see planned drilling near a tract. How to resolve an Abstract and Survey description and read pending permits with the Texas pack.",false,"md",{"author":124,"category":125},"Township America","guides",true,"\u002Fblog\u002Ftexas-rrc-w-1-pending-permits-monitoring-new-drilling-activity-near-a-tract-with-the-texas-pack",{"title":5,"description":120},"blog\u002Ftexas-rrc-w-1-pending-permits-monitoring-new-drilling-activity-near-a-tract-with-the-texas-pack",[131,132,133,134,135],"oil-and-gas","texas","rrc","w-1-permit","due-diligence","Grw019USYwUGwzwDWZtp_3kGmCa6ta2Rfl2q8AA5C8k"]