The Texas Railroad Commission has some remarkable tools online and available for anyone to use to look up information about oil and gas wells in the state. For example, there's a new RRC GIS Map Viewer that provides a wealth of information for the energy industry, and it should provide hours of entertainment for cartography buffs. It's better than a video game!
Let's put it through it's paces. Most local residents have seen that oil well pump jack about fifty yards West of the Sam's Club parking lot in Midland. It would be a landmark but for the fact that pump jacks out number trees in this part of the world.
To locate that well on the RRC map, first go to the RRC GIS Map Viewer. Click on "Accept" button to acknowledge that they don't guarantee its accuracy. Find the blank that says "Go to County/Offshore Area/Bay" and scroll down and click on 329 - Midland County, and the map should zoom in on Midland County.
Zoom in on the West side of the city and navigate around so that you can see the intersection of Loop 250 and State Highway 191 (also highway 158 at that point). That green dot with the number 31493 below it is the well under examination. That number along with the county code (329) is that well's American Petroleum Institute (API) number which is a number unique to that particular well.
Now let's find out a little bit about that well. Open a new browser tab and go to the RRC drilling permit (W-1) query site. We know that the API number is 329-31493, so fill that in the appropriate space. Click "Submit" and we get a screen telling us that a permit was submitted by HCW Exploration, Inc., and approved on March 5, 1985, for a well named "Fred." (How quaint.)
Click on the word "Fred" and the "Form W-1: Review" comes up to tell us that it was drilled to a total depth of 10,200 feet and completed on March 19, 1985. Hold on, we're not done yet. Wouldn't you like to find out how much oil Fred is pumping?
Go to the RRC Production Data page, and click on Specific Lease Query. This part of the system uses the Railroad Commission Lease ID number, and one deficiency of the system is that there doesn't seem to be an easy way to translate API numbers into RRC Lease ID numbers. But, we have the name of the well, and that's enough info to get there, it's just not as easy as it could be.
Click on the Lease Name Search. Click on the button for "containing these letters" and type in "Fred" in the space for the name. Select Midland County then hit "Submit." That produces a specific lease report which should contain "(08-29731) Fred" in the box. "Submit" that, and we get another query page asking for a date range.
If we put in a range between January 2005 and August 2005 we see that the operator, Pioneer Natural Resources, USA, Inc., has reported that Fred produced and disposed of 1,796 barrels of oil and 2,386 MCF casinghead gas through August of this year. No reports beyond August are currently available online for Fred.
Oil prices have fluctuated this year, but using an average of $50 per barrel, that would come to around $90,000 for the oil for the eight month period. And let's use a conservative $6 per MCF for the casinghead gas, and that comes to around $14,000. It's probably safe to conclude that the well is producing in profitable quantities.
Going back to that map, is you scroll around Midland one thing that looks intriguing is the number of horizontal wells producing from spots under residential parts of the city. Now there's a tantalizing prospect. Not long ago in a post titled Pump Jacks in the Parks -- Let's Drill for Oil I speculated about the possibility of drilling in the city parks. But with the capability of drilling horizontally that idea is even more tempting.
Perhaps this online mapping system doesn't interest everyone, but I'm in a continual state of amazement at the things that pop up online. And to Fred, who turned 20 this year, a great big happy birthday to you!
Very cool and really usefull tools!
Posted by: Wallace-Midland Texas | November 14, 2005 at 03:39 PM