Wellbore H-15 Inactive Well Tests — what it is, in short

What this is:

Record type 12. The H-15 is the fluid-level or pressure test an operator must run on a well that has been inactive for twelve months. Each row records the test date, the reporting operator, the district, field and lease, the status and the base of usable water. A million H-15 records is the public inactive-well file.

How it is laid out:

The Railroad Commission publishes this as Fixed-width ASCII. Columns are byte ranges with no separators, described only in a scanned record layout. We decode it into a table you can open anywhere. It has 17 columns and about 1M rows.

The columns you will most likely want:

api_county The three-digit county component of the API number.
api_unique The five-digit well component of the API number. Unique only in combination with the county code.
h15_date_key Key of the H-15 filing, CCYYMMDD.
h15_status Where the bore stands against its H-15 test requirement.
h15_operator Operator number that filed the H-15.
h15_next_test_ccyy Year the next H-15 test is due.

…and 11 more, all documented on the full page.

What we add:

Find wells that have been inactive long enough to require testing, see which operators are testing on time, and combine with the plugging records to identify orphan-well risk.

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.
The Commission's single-letter codes translated into words.

Worth knowing before use:

The next-test year and month are two separate columns, not a date. An H-15 record existing means the well was inactive, which is exactly the population most people mean by 'idle wells' — but a missing record does not prove the well is producing.

The full page lists every trap in this dataset.

Get it:

People who want this usually want:

Full Wellbore Database (ASCII) Every well ever assigned an API number in Texas, with casing, tubing, perforations, formations, plugging and inactive-well tests.
Completion Information in Data Format Forms G-1 and W-2: the filings that turn a drilled hole into a producing well.
Completion Casing Records Casing strings as reported on the completion filing.
Completion Formation Records Formation tops as reported on the completion filing.
Completion Production Intervals The intervals a completion produces through, including open-hole sections.
Completion Stimulation Materials What was pumped into the well, over what interval, at completion.