Mapped Well Locations (Surface) — what it is, in short

What this is:

A latitude and longitude for every well the Commission has mapped, keyed on the API number every other dataset here is keyed on. 1,379,242 surface holes across all 255 county packages, federal offshore included. This is the piece the rest of the catalogue was missing.

How it is laid out:

The Railroad Commission publishes this as ArcView shapefile. ArcView shapefile — several files that must be kept together. We decode it into a table you can open anywhere. It has 11 columns and about 1.4M rows.

The columns you will most likely want:

county_code The three-digit county code, taken from the name of the package this row came out of -- well001s.dbf is county 001.
surface_id RRC's own integer key for this mapped point, and the spine of the family: texas.gis_well_bottom and texas.gis_well_path both point back at it.
symnum The symbol number RRC's map system draws this point with.
api The eight-digit API number, county then unique -- '00130641'.
reliab RRC's positional-reliability code, two characters.
long27 Decimal degrees on NAD27.

…and 5 more, all documented on the full page.

What we add:

Put a million Texas wells on a map, or attach a coordinate to any API-keyed dataset on this site -- permits, completions, production, plugging -- without going near a shapefile.

Decoded out of the Commission's original format into something Excel opens.
Filterable before you download, so you can take one county instead of the whole state.
Mapped — download it straight into Google Earth or QGIS.

Worth knowing before use:

A surface hole is where the well starts, not where it produces. For a horizontal well that is often a mile or more from the perforated interval; the bottom-hole dataset has the other end, and the well path dataset says which wells have one.

The full page lists every trap in this dataset.

Get it:

People who want this usually want:

Mapped Well Locations (Bottom Hole) Where 1.40 million Texas wells end up, with the sidetrack code.
Statewide API Data (dBase) The API-to-lease map: every mapped Texas well bore, its lease, its quad and its plug date.
Mapped Well Paths Which Texas wells are deviated, and how long the path is.
All Layers by County Every map layer for a county in one package.
Base Layers by County Roads, water features, cities and political boundaries as shapefiles.
Pipeline Layers by County Pipeline routes as shapefiles, one layer per county.