license: cc0-1.0
task_categories:
- tabular-classification
- tabular-regression
- time-series-forecasting
- text-classification
language:
- en
tags:
- energy
- oil-and-gas
- upstream
- well-permits
- geospatial
- public-domain
- government-data
pretty_name: US Oil & Gas Well Permits (27 States)
size_categories:
- 1M<n<10M
source_datasets:
- original
configs:
- config_name: default
data_files:
- split: train
path: well_permits.parquet
US Oil & Gas Well Permits — 27 States, 1864–Present
2.2M+ permits across 27 US states. Public-domain data aggregated from state regulators (TX RRC, CA CalGEM, ND IIC, NM OCD, AK AOGCC, and 22 others) into a single normalized schema with consistent API-number primary keys.
Snapshot dated 2026-04-17. This dataset is a frozen point-in-time release — there is no commitment to refresh on a schedule. For daily-updated permits, monthly well production volumes, normalized operator/formation enrichments, and live commodity prices, use the OilPriceAPI commercial API.
Quick start
from datasets import load_dataset
ds = load_dataset("Oilpriceapi/us-well-permits", split="train")
print(ds[0])
# {'api_number': '4232133421', 'state_code': 'TX', 'operator_name': 'Pioneer Natural Resources',
# 'permit_date': '2025-11-14', 'latitude': 31.8473, 'longitude': -102.3677, ...}
Why this dataset
- Truly public domain (CC0). State permit filings are public records — safe for training, finetuning, redistribution, and commercial use. No exchange licenses, no DMCA risk.
- Schema-unified across 27 regulators. Each state agency publishes in its own format (CSV, ArcGIS, PDF, scraped HTML). We unify the raw fields into one consistent column layout so you can query across states without per-state munging.
- Stable API-number primary key. 14-digit API well numbers are reconciled to a single canonical form so wells can be joined across permit, completion, and (commercial) production tables. Raw agency form preserved in
api_number_raw. - Lat/lon as published by state agencies for geospatial analysis.
What's in the commercial API but not here
This snapshot omits the higher-effort enrichments that ride on top of the raw data:
- Operator-name normalization — collapsing "PIONEER NAT RES USA INC", "Pioneer Natural Resources", "Pioneer Nat Res", etc. into a single canonical operator (essential for M&A-aware analytics)
- Target-formation normalization — mapping the long tail of agency-reported formation strings ("WOLFCAMP A", "Wlfcmp-A", "WC-A Spraberry") to a canonical formation
- PLSS-validated coordinates — state-published lat/lon cross-checked against section/township/range
- Daily refresh of new permit filings
- Monthly well-level production volumes (oil BBL / gas MCF / water BBL) — see below
- Live commodity prices for joining permit activity to price signals
These power the commercial OilPriceAPI tier.
State coverage (as of 2026-04-17)
| State | Permits | Earliest | Latest |
|---|---|---|---|
| TX | 406,082 | 1966-07-28 | 2026-04-14 |
| CA | 240,553 | 1867-08-01 | 2026-03-26 |
| OH | 238,601 | 2011-05-10 | 2023-12-09 |
| WY | 207,790 | 1900-01-01 | 2025-03-25 |
| LA | 190,173 | 1902-03-29 | 2026-01-08 |
| NM | 140,282 | 1973-07-01 | 2025-11-01 |
| CO | 124,135 | 1898-01-01 | 2026-04-14 |
| OK | 117,962 | 1901-09-09 | 2026-04-14 |
| KY | 102,091 | 1900-03-13 | 2025-06-10 |
| IL | 97,822 | 1900-01-01 | 2025-11-13 |
| MI | 84,521 | 2025-01-10 | 2026-02-24 |
| NY | 46,080 | 1864-01-01 | 2026-03-31 |
| MT | 41,941 | 1890-01-01 | 2026-01-01 |
| ND | 41,743 | 1904-12-23 | 2026-04-08 |
| UT | 39,833 | 2026-01-06 | 2026-04-14 |
| KS | 35,004 | 2025-01-12 | 2026-03-27 |
| AK | 2,351 | 2025-01-11 | 2026-02-27 |
| ... | (10 more) |
Total: 2,196,000+ permits across 27 states.
Historical depth — 162 years of US oil & gas
This is one of the longest continuous records of US extractive industry available as a single normalized dataset. The earliest entries predate the Civil War's end:
- Earliest record: 1864 (NY) — five years after the Drake Well (1859) launched the modern petroleum industry
- CA gold-rush-to-oil transition captured from 1867
- Spindletop / early-1900s boom — IL, WY, MT, KY, CO all carry permits from 1898–1902
- Postwar drilling expansion is the largest era: 847K permits filed 1950–1999
- Modern shale era (Bakken, Permian, Marcellus) — 400K+ permits since 2010
Permits by era
| Era | Permits | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Pre-1900 | 441 | Civil War through Spindletop precursor |
| 1900–1949 | 63,934 | Early industrial / early Texas Railroad Commission |
| 1950–1999 | 846,835 | Postwar drilling boom — the bulk of historical data |
| 2000–2009 | 187,949 | Pre-shale conventional + early unconventional |
| 2010–2019 | 166,294 | Shale revolution (Bakken/Eagle Ford/Marcellus) |
| 2020–2026 | 235,730 | Recent / actively-refreshed |
| Undated | 694,822 | State legacy records without filing date |
Why the depth matters
- Long-horizon energy-transition modeling — calibrate decline curves against decades of vintage wells, not just the modern shale era
- Operator-genealogy graphs — track corporate consolidation across the M&A cycles of 1986, 1998, 2014, 2020
- Climate accounting baselines — pre-1990 well populations are the foundation of methane-emissions-from-legacy-infrastructure inventories
- Industrial / economic history — the only public dataset where you can join a Wyoming permit from 1900 to a Permian permit from 2026 in a single SQL query
Schema (public snapshot)
| Field | Type | Notes |
|---|---|---|
api_number |
string | 14-digit reconciled API well number (primary key) |
api_number_raw |
string | Original format from state agency |
state_code |
string | 2-letter state |
county |
string | |
permit_number |
string | Agency-issued permit ID |
permit_type |
string | New drill, recompletion, plug-back, etc. (as filed) |
permit_status |
string | Approved / pending / cancelled / expired (as filed) |
permit_date |
date | Date permit was filed |
approval_date |
date | |
spud_date |
date | Drilling start |
completion_date |
date | |
operator_name |
string | As reported by state agency (no normalization) |
well_name, well_number |
string | |
well_type |
string | Oil / gas / injection / dry hole / etc. (as filed) |
latitude, longitude |
float | WGS84, as published by state |
target_formation |
string | As reported (e.g., "WOLFCAMP A", "Bakken", "Eagle Ford") |
total_depth_proposed |
int | Feet |
lease_name |
string | |
source |
string | Originating state agency |
source_url |
string | Direct URL to source filing |
data_as_of |
date | When this row was last fetched from the agency |
Normalized derivative columns (operator_name_normalized, target_formation_normalized, validated coordinates) are available via the commercial API.
Use cases
- Energy supply forecasting — permit-to-spud-to-production lag models
- ESG / methane attribution — operator-level activity tracking
- Geospatial ML — shale play boundary detection, formation classification
- Agent tools — RAG/agent context for oil-and-gas analyst workflows
- Backtesting — historical permit velocity vs. price signals
Production data + cohort analysis (commercial)
The companion well-production dataset — monthly volumes per well (oil BBL, gas MCF, water BBL) — joins to this permit table via api_number and powers the analyses operators and lenders actually pay for:
- Vintage cohort type curves — group wells by spud year/quarter, plot mean and P10/P50/P90 production trajectories. The classic "are 2024 wells outperforming 2023?" question.
- IP30 / IP90 / IP180 benchmarking — initial-production rates by basin, formation, operator, completion vintage.
- Cumulative-by-month curves (CUM6, CUM12, CUM24) — first-year cumulative production as the standard well-economics input.
- Decline-curve / EUR fitting — Arps hyperbolic + exponential fits over multi-year history; estimated ultimate recovery per well, per cohort, per operator.
- PDP rollups — proved-developed-producing volumes for reserve estimates and acquisition diligence.
- Lookback well economics — full-cycle IRR, payback months, breakeven prices, all keyed to the price series in the same OilPriceAPI account.
State coverage of the production layer:
- TX (Railroad Commission), AK (AOGCC) — live in the commercial API
- ND, NM, OK, CO, WY — on the roadmap
Cohort analysis endpoints (/v1/well-production/cycle-time/cohorts, type curves, decline fits) ship pre-computed via the API so analysts don't have to build the pipeline themselves.
Live data + commercial API
This dataset is a snapshot. For:
- Daily-refreshed permits as they're filed
- Production volumes
- Live oil & gas prices (Brent, WTI, Henry Hub, regional differentials)
- Direct API access (REST + CSV + WebSocket)
→ OilPriceAPI.com — free tier available, no card required.
Citation
@dataset{oilpriceapi_well_permits_2026,
title = {US Oil & Gas Well Permits (27 States)},
author = {OilPriceAPI},
year = {2026},
url = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/Oilpriceapi/us-well-permits},
note = {Aggregated public-domain data from US state oil & gas regulators}
}
License
CC0 1.0 Universal (Public Domain Dedication). Original data is public record from US state regulatory agencies. The aggregation, normalization, and schema are released to the public domain — use commercially, modify, redistribute, no attribution required (though appreciated).
Maintained by
OilPriceAPI — energy data infrastructure designed for AI/ML pipelines. Built by Karl, who has been working in AI/ML since the 1990s (expert systems → classical ML → deep learning → LLM agents). Every part of the platform — ingest, normalization, schemas, API shapes — is engineered for the way ML systems actually consume data.
Issues / requests: hello@oilpriceapi.com.