Oil & Gas Drilling Data: From County Permits to Rig-Sensor Corpora · Head-to-head
Texas Railroad Commission Oil & Gas Data Sets Available for Download vs USGS Aggregated Oil and Natural Gas Drilling and Production History of the United States (ver. 1.1, April 2023)
Which oil & gas drilling data: from county permits to rig-sensor corpora data fits your job: Texas Railroad Commission Oil & Gas Data Sets Available for Download, or USGS Aggregated Oil and Natural Gas Drilling and Production History of the United States. API, files, or your warehouse. Daily, weekly, or hourly.
Texas Railroad Commission Oil & Gas Data Sets Available for Download
USGS Aggregated Oil and Natural Gas Drilling and Production History of the United States (ver. 1.1, April 2023)
Where the fields line up
No shared field names. These two answer different questions.
| Field | Texas Railroad Commission Oil & Gas Data Sets Available for Download | USGS Aggregated Oil and Natural Gas Drilling and Production History of the United States |
|---|---|---|
Well API number (county code + unique well number) | documented | not in this set |
RRC field district and lease name | documented | not in this set |
Original completion date and total depth in feet | documented | not in this set |
Drilling permit number, sequence suffix and county code | documented | not in this set |
Application type code including horizontal variants | documented | not in this set |
Permit issue date, spud date and well status letter | documented | not in this set |
Lease-level district production ledger figures | documented | not in this set |
COUNT_WELL | not in this set | documented |
COUNT_OIL_WELL | not in this set | documented |
COUNT_GAS_WELL | not in this set | documented |
COUNT_DRY_WELL | not in this set | documented |
COUNT_INJECTION_WELL | not in this set | documented |
Coverage, side by side
| Texas Railroad Commission Oil & Gas Data Sets Available for Download | USGS Aggregated Oil and Natural Gas Drilling and Production History of the United States | |
|---|---|---|
| Geographic | State of Texas, organized by RRC district and three-digit county codes | Conterminous United States and adjacent areas, longitude -179 to -67 and latitude 24 to 72 |
| Temporal | Wells and permits from the historical record to the present; production held as district ledgers | Well history September 1817 to September 1, 2022; annual production aggregations back to the mid-1800s, thin before the mid-1900s; ver. 1.1 dated April 2023 |
What each contains
Pick by fit, not by loyalty.
| Texas Railroad Commission Oil & Gas Data Sets Available for Download | USGS Aggregated Oil and Natural Gas Drilling and Production History of the United States | |
|---|---|---|
| Publisher | Railroad Commission of Texas (RRC) - the regulator of the largest producing onshore oil and gas state in the US | U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) - the federal earth-science agency |
| Subject lens | Every Texas well and lease: wellbore segments, drilling permits including horizontal, completions, directional surveys and lease-level production ledgers | National spatial history: every US oil and gas well from 1817 to September 2022, binned into grid squares with counts and production volumes |
| Measure type | Record-level attributes per well, permit and lease, plus lease-level production ledgers by district | Aggregated counts (total, oil, gas, dry, injection, horizontal, fractured wells) and summed volumes (oil, gas, water) per cell and year |
| Geographic coverage | State of Texas, organized by RRC district and three-digit county codes | Conterminous United States and adjacent areas, longitude -179 to -67 and latitude 24 to 72 |
| Temporal coverage | Wells and permits from the historical record to the present; production held as district ledgers | Well history September 1817 to September 1, 2022; annual production aggregations back to the mid-1800s, thin before the mid-1900s; ver. 1.1 dated April 2023 |
| Detail level | Individual wellbore root plus recurring completion, casing, perforation, tubing, formation, squeeze and plugging segments; individual permit records | Eight feature layers: four well-history layers (1-mile and 10-mile, plain and year-binned) and four production layers (2-mile and 10-mile, plain and year-binned) |
| Field dictionary | 14 documented fields, verified during research | 11 verified fields, verified during research |
| Scale | Every well ever permitted in Texas - hundreds of thousands of bores across recurring segments, plus permit and ledger files | Eight national layers of grid cells, each cell holding seven well-count measures or three production sums per year |
| Quality rubric | 9/10, above the slice average of 7.93 and catalog average of 7.81 | 9/10, above the slice average of 7.93 and catalog average of 7.81 |
| Best for | Working at the level of one well, one permit or one lease inside Texas | Mapping where and when America drilled and produced, without record-level detail |
What each does better
Texas RRC Oil & Gas Data Sets
Depth and resolution. Every well ever permitted in Texas appears as itself: a wellbore root segment carrying field district, original completion date, total depth, plugging flag and newest drilling permit number, with recurring completion, casing, perforation, tubing, formation, squeeze and plugging segments hanging off it. Permits decompose into county code, lease name, well number, permitted total depth, application type and well-status letters such as D for dry hole. Production lands where accountants want it, in lease-level ledgers organized by RRC district. And the record stays open-ended: wells and permits run from the historical record to the present, so the newest Texas activity exists here as a row rather than as an absence. The boundary is just as clear - nothing outside Texas, however exhaustively the one state is drawn.
USGS Aggregated Drilling & Production History
Breadth and comparability. One geometry covers the conterminous United States and adjacent areas - longitude -179 to -67, latitude 24 to 72 - so the Permian, the Bakken and Appalachia sit in the same frame with identical column meanings. Well history reaches back to 1817, and the year-binned layers let a national map animate decade by decade. The release is anonymous by construction: compiled from a commercial well database yet published only as aggregates, so no operator name or record-level identity survives - what remains is pattern, from COUNT_FRACTURED_WELL concentrations to SUM_OIL_VOL hot spots to dry-hole ratios. Version 1.1 corrected a one-year offset that had shifted the year-binned layers of the original September 2022 release. The trade-off is a hard stop: nothing drilled, fracked or produced after September 1, 2022 exists here.
Where they're equivalent
On authority, on rigor, and on the unit beneath everything. Both are first-party regulator and survey publications rather than secondhand compilations - verified field by field during research - and both rate 9/10 against the same rubric. Both treat the well as the atomic unit: RRC preserves each bore segment by segment, while USGS starts from classified individual wells and then sums them away. Both carry production volumes tied to administrative periods, and both document their definitions well enough to audit - RRC through numbered layout manuals, USGS through a full metadata record explaining exactly how each count was classed. Neither steps outside its chosen frame: RRC offers no second state, USGS offers no record-level well.
The verdict
Sample both, pick by fit. If the question names a well, a permit or a lease - offset-well analysis, lease economics, due diligence on a Texas position - the RRC sets are the fit, because only record-level rows answer record-level questions. If the question names a region, a trend or a decade - where the country drilled, when hydraulic fracturing concentrated, how gas output moved between basins - the USGS grids are the fit, because eight layers beat hundreds of thousands of bores the moment a map is the deliverable. The honest reading of the scorecard is that neither wins overall: a 9/10 filing cabinet and a 9/10 heat map serve different desks. Request samples of each, load them side by side, and let the fit decide. Or take both in one feed.
Sample both, pick by fit. See Texas Railroad Commission Oil & Gas Data Sets Available for Download · See USGS Aggregated Oil and Natural Gas Drilling and Production History of the United States
Or take both in one feed
Yes, and the join is geographic rather than keyed. RRC rows carry district and county codes; USGS cells carry coordinates. Translate one into the other and a Texas cell acquires record-level ancestry: how many of the wells in that 1-mile square exist as completed bores in Full Wellbore, which permits spawned them, what the lease ledgers reported. Expect friction at the seams. The grids end at September 2022, water volumes are absent for many states - Oklahoma, Kansas, Ohio and West Virginia among them - and more than 300,000 production records of unspecified year were assigned to the year before first known production, producing artificial spikes in some areas' first reported year, Texas in 1957 being the documented case. Delivered daily, weekly, or hourly - your call - the pair works as one brief: Texas in focus, the nation in context.
API, files, or your warehouse. Daily, weekly, or hourly.
Fair questions
Is USGS Aggregated Drilling & Production History better than Texas RRC Oil & Gas Data Sets?
Better at different jobs. USGS owns the map: every US oil and gas well from 1817 to September 2022 in 1- and 10-mile grids, with counts of oil, gas, dry, injection, horizontally drilled and hydraulically fractured wells plus annual oil, gas and water volumes across eight feature layers. RRC owns the record: every Texas wellbore, drilling permit and lease ledger at row level, fourteen documented fields, running from the historical record to the present. Both rate 9 out of 10. Sample both, pick by fit.
Do the two datasets cover the same ground?
The theme, yes; the measure, no. Both describe American oil and gas drilling and both descend from well-level records. RRC stops one step short of summary: each well, permit and lease stays a discrete row with district, county and lease identifiers. USGS takes the final step: wells are classified, counted and binned into grid squares, leaving counts and volumes but no identities. One is a filing cabinet; the other is a heat map.
Which dataset reaches further back?
USGS, by any measure of depth: well history starts in 1817 and year-binned layers track spud activity one calendar year at a time, though production before the mid-1900s is documented as incomplete. RRC's Texas record runs from historical well files forward to the present without a published start year, and it holds the recent end outright - new wells and permits appear as rows, where the USGS grids stop entirely at September 1, 2022.
Can the record-level Texas files and the national grid counts be compared directly?
Only after a geographic translation. RRC identifies wells by county-code-plus-unique numbers and reports production by lease and district; USGS reports counts and volumes per cell-year with identities already dissolved. Join them on mapped coordinates or county boundaries, not on shared keys. Mind the seams: the grids end at September 2022, several states lack water volumes, and some first-reported years carry artificial spikes - Texas in 1957 is the documented example.
Can Datadory deliver both datasets together?
Yes - separately or merged into one Texas-plus-national brief, delivered daily, weekly, or hourly, your call. Each arrives normalized to its documented field dictionary, fourteen fields on the RRC side and eleven on USGS, with sample rows for inspection before anything ships. The merge stays analytical rather than row-to-row: district and county codes meet grid squares instead of matching keys, and the USGS window closes at September 2022. Or take both in one feed.