What a land package contains

The area and the depth interval

A land package is bounded two ways. One bound is an area, set by tracts or survey sections. The other is a depth interval, stated in feet from one depth to another. Both are agreed at the start, and both are written on the first page.

Plate 1 shows the idea with two made-up tracts and a column of ground. The drawing carries no depth values and no claim about any real place.

The contents

A package has seven parts. Each part names the records it was read from and the date they were read.

1. Area and depth statement

The tracts, the depth interval and the date of the search, as agreed.

2. Rights stack

For each tract, the surface, mineral, lease and depth wording found in the instruments, side by side, in the form of the rights stack worksheet. The depth wording is quoted as it appears.

3. Lease and unit status

The leases, releases and unit designations found, as the record shows them. In Louisiana that includes field orders, which reflect unitization (the pooling of tracts) matters among other things and are imaged by order number, and unit survey plats, which the agency describes as depicting the mineral ownership of a pooled unit.

4. Well and records inventory

The wells in the area and the record types held for each. Coverage differs by record. The Railroad Commission of Texas says oil and gas well records for the period 1964 to the present are available through its Imaged Records Query, with older records on microformat; its page puts unit jackets and well record runs (the agency's names for older well forms, plats and logs on film) at approximately 1920 to the mid 1960s. It says well log images received since July 2004 are in the Imaged Records Query, and that production data from 1993 to the present is online. The Louisiana Office of Conservation says all engineering documents and issued permit documents it received since 2000 are imaged by serial number, and that older well files may have documents that are not imaged. Each row of the inventory carries its own date range, so a gap in coverage is not read as a gap in activity.

5. Access and easements

The surface owner of each tract as the record shows it, the easements and access roads found in the record, and the wells and pads they serve.

6. Open questions

Each item the record leaves unclear, with the reason and the record that could close it.

7. Sources and dates

Every record named, its source, and the date it was read.

The Railroad Commission says it has no authority over lease and royalty matters or property rights matters, so the well inventory is kept apart from the lease and mineral parts. The inventory is a list of records. It is not a finding about what any well could do.

State and federal land

The package notes whether any tract is public land, because the statutes below name who may lease some public land.

• Texas: Section 141.073 allows the School Land Board, on direction of the commissioner of the General Land Office, to lease permanent school fund land, excluding wildlife refuges and recreational areas, for the production of geothermal energy and associated resources.
• Louisiana: the State Mineral and Energy Board has exclusive authority to lease state-owned and public-domain lands, including road beds, water bottoms and lands adjudicated to the state at tax sale, for geothermal resources and byproducts.
• Federal: subject to section 1014 of Title 30, the Secretary of the Interior may issue leases for geothermal resources in lands the Secretary administers, including public, withdrawn and acquired lands; in any national forest or other lands administered by the Department of Agriculture through the Forest Service, including public, withdrawn and acquired lands; and in lands conveyed by the United States subject to a reservation of the geothermal resources. Rights to develop geothermal resources underlying lands owned by the United States may be acquired solely in accordance with that chapter, 30 U.S.C. chapter 23.

The package names which office applies to which tract. It does not describe lease terms.

What is left open on purpose

A package lists what the instruments say and where they disagree or fall silent. It does not close those items by inference. Four things stay open on purpose.

• Who holds geothermal energy and associated resources under an older deed. Texas section 141.004 was added in 2023, effective June 18, 2023. Subsection (a) says that, unless a conveyance, contract, deed, reservation, exception, limitation, lease or other binding obligation expressly provides otherwise, these resources below the surface are owned as real property by the landowner, or by the owner of the surface estate if the surface and mineral estates have been severed. Subsection (c) says the section does not apply to minerals dissolved or otherwise contained in groundwater, including in hot brines. It says the section also does not change existing law on oil, gas or mineral extraction regardless of its heat or energy potential, on the rights of the dominant and servient estates (see guide 2), or on the ownership and use of groundwater. The package lists the instruments that bear on it and draws no conclusion.
• Whether a depth wording reaches a given interval. The package quotes the wording and marks the question open.
• Anything about the resource. The desk does not make engineering, resource or feasibility statements.
• Anything the record does not show. A Texas title insurer may, subject to its underwriting standards, except a mineral estate or geothermal energy and associated resources from coverage, and the exception does not create coverage as to their condition or ownership. The package reads the record directly and lists what it could not find.

A made-up table of contents

This is the shape of a package for a made-up area of two tracts. No part of it describes a real place.

Each entry on the open questions list says what was looked for, where, and what would close it.