High Cost Gas
Queryable Fixed-width
Every lease certified as high-cost gas for severance tax relief.
Get the data
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What this is
Gas that qualifies as high-cost under Section 107 of the Natural Gas Policy Act pays reduced or no Texas severance tax. This file is the certification record: 90,000 rows naming the lease, the well, the operator, the docket that granted it, the qualifying code and the dates that govern the incentive — received, approved, post-approval, first production and spud.
It matters because the same lease appears in the production data with no hint that its tax treatment is different.
What you can do with it
Find which leases are certified and from when, and quantify how much production is receiving tax relief by joining to the PDQ lease data.
Follow an operator's certifications, and tie each back to the docket that granted it.
Gotchas
oil_gas_code here holds the word 'GAS', not the letter 'G' that the production data uses. The district is RRC's internal number, matching the PDQ tables and not the printed designation.
The lease number joins cleanly to the PDQ regulatory lease directory on district plus lease number — but the oil/gas code has to be translated first.
All six date columns are text as published, in the file's own format, not parsed dates.
Certification is per lease and per well, so a lease appears more than once.
Record layout
13 columns.
high_cost_gas
13 columns
| # | Column | Type | RRC name | Meaning | Lookup |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |
oil_gas_code
key
|
text | OIL_GAS_CODE |
'OIL' or 'GAS' — note that this file spells the schedule out in full. e.g. GAS | — |
| 2 |
district
key
join
|
text | DISTRICT |
RRC district the record belongs to, written the way RRC prints it (01-06, 6E, 7B, 7C, 08, 8A, 09, 10). e.g. 14 | RRC district (internal number) |
| 3 |
lease_number
key
join
|
text | LEASE_NUMBER |
RRC lease number. Unique only within a district and a schedule. e.g. 027587 | — |
| 4 |
well_number
key
|
text | WELL_NUMBER |
Well number within the lease. | — |
| 5 |
operator_number
join
|
text | OPERATOR_NUMBER |
The operator's six-digit RRC P-5 organization number. | — |
| 6 |
docket_number
join
|
text | DOCKET_NUMBER |
Docket number of the high-cost gas determination. | — |
| 7 |
c107x_code
|
text | C107X_CODE |
Section 107 category code the certification was granted under. | — |
| 8 |
post_approval_date
|
text | POST_APPROVAL_DATE |
Date the approval was posted. | — |
| 9 |
approval_date
|
text | APPROVAL_DATE |
Date the certification was approved. | — |
| 10 |
first_prod_date
|
text | FIRST_PROD_DATE |
First production date claimed for the qualifying well. | — |
| 11 |
spud_date
|
text | SPUD_DATE |
Spud date claimed for the qualifying well. | — |
| 12 |
received_date
|
text | RECEIVED_DATE |
Date RRC received the application. | — |
| 13 |
ingested_at
|
timestamptz | — | When the upstream pipeline last wrote this row. Not an RRC field — it is EZRRC's provenance stamp, and it is what the freshness badge is measured against. | — |
Code lookups used here
Every coded column in this dataset resolves to a real lookup table, so
a well code of G can be read as what it actually means.
RRC district (internal number) 14 values
Read by district
RRC's internal sequential district numbering, 01 to 14 plus 20 for statewide. The production data, the UIC database and the high-cost gas certifications all use this. Internal 07 is District 6E, 08 is 7B, 09 is 7C, 10 is District 08, 11 is 8A, 13 is 09 and 14 is District 10. There is no internal 12.
| Code | Means |
|---|---|
01 |
District 01 — San Antonio (internal 01) Internal district number 01, which RRC prints as District 01 and administers from San Antonio. |
02 |
District 02 — San Antonio (internal 02) Internal district number 02, which RRC prints as District 02 and administers from San Antonio. |
03 |
District 03 — Houston (internal 03) Internal district number 03, which RRC prints as District 03 and administers from Houston. |
04 |
District 04 — Corpus Christi (internal 04) Internal district number 04, which RRC prints as District 04 and administers from Corpus Christi. |
05 |
District 05 — Kilgore (internal 05) Internal district number 05, which RRC prints as District 05 and administers from Kilgore. |
06 |
District 06 — Kilgore (internal 06) Internal district number 06, which RRC prints as District 06 and administers from Kilgore. |
07 |
District 6E — Kilgore (internal 07) Internal district number 07, which RRC prints as District 6E and administers from Kilgore. |
08 |
District 7B — Abilene (internal 08) Internal district number 08, which RRC prints as District 7B and administers from Abilene. |
09 |
District 7C — San Angelo (internal 09) Internal district number 09, which RRC prints as District 7C and administers from San Angelo. |
10 |
District 08 — Midland (internal 10) Internal district number 10, which RRC prints as District 08 and administers from Midland. |
11 |
District 8A — Midland (internal 11) Internal district number 11, which RRC prints as District 8A and administers from Midland. |
13 |
District 09 — Wichita Falls (internal 13) Internal district number 13, which RRC prints as District 09 and administers from Wichita Falls. |
14 |
District 10 — Pampa (internal 14) Internal district number 14, which RRC prints as District 10 and administers from Pampa. |
20 |
District 20 — State Wide (internal 20) Internal district number 20, which RRC prints as District 20 and administers from State Wide. |
Source: Generated from texas.pdq_gp_district.district_no
What this joins to
The Railroad Commission never states these keys anywhere in the files. They are the reason the data is hard to use, so here they are with the exact columns on both sides.
High Cost Gas joins to PDQ Regulatory Lease Directory on District = District number and Lease number = Lease number — many rows here share a single row there.
certifies the lease
The certification file and the production system agree on the district (both use the internal numbering) and on the zero-padded lease number, so those two columns join exactly — 4,998 of 5,000 sampled certifications find their lease. They do not agree on the oil/gas code: the certification file writes 'GAS' and the production system writes 'G', which is why that column is not part of the join. Every row here is gas. This is also the route to the field: the certification carries no field number, but the lease directory it lands on does.
high-cost-gas.district = pdq-regulatory-lease-directory.district_no AND high-cost-gas.lease_number = pdq-regulatory-lease-directory.lease_no
High Cost Gas joins to P-5 Organization (ASCII) on Operator number = ID — many rows here share a single row there.
certified for
The operator holding the certification. 4,236 of 5,000 sampled rows resolve against the current P-5 register; older certifications name organizations that have since been removed.
high-cost-gas.operator_number = p5-organization-ascii.id
High Cost Gas joins to Oil and Gas Docket on Docket number — many rows here share a single row there.
was granted in docket
The docket that granted the certification. The two files write the number differently — the certification file zero-pads to six digits and the docket file does not pad at all — so this join needs the leading zeros stripped first and is recorded here as documentation of the link rather than as a lookup that will match as-is.
high-cost-gas.docket_number = oil-and-gas-docket.docket_number
Where this comes from
- Published by
- Texas Railroad Commission — the original page
- Original format
- Fixed-width Columns are byte ranges with no separators, described only in a scanned record layout.
- Update cadence
- Updated once a month (Monthly. Available by the 27th.)
- RRC download link
- GoAnywhere MFT
- Record layout manual
- Our table
texas.high_cost_gas
EZRRC is an independent mirror of public-domain data published by the Texas Railroad Commission. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by the RRC. For any legal or regulatory purpose, verify against the official RRC release.