No. 4 of ten · API state code 17
Louisiana: the Office of Conservation.
Office of Conservation — the agency that decides where wells go in Louisiana. Here is what it holds, what it doesn't, and the one document worth your afternoon.
The agency
Where it came from
Louisiana is a civil law state, and its mineral law is genuinely different from every other state on this list. The Commissioner of Conservation creates drilling units by order, sized to the area a proposed well is likely to drain, and every mineral owner inside that unit shares production on a surface-acre basis.
- Agency
- Office of Conservation
- Sits within
- Department of Energy and Natural Resources (renamed from Natural Resources)
- Also worth knowing
- Headed by the Commissioner of Conservation
- Website
- www.dnr.louisiana.gov
- Main plays
- Haynesville · Tuscaloosa Marine Shale · state waters
- API state code
- 17 — every well number in the state starts with it
- Pooling / unitization
- Compulsory unitization
- Ad valorem on minerals
- Parish assessment — confirm the current treatment locally
- Records access
- Free
- Deeds & leases at
- Parish Clerk of Court
- Production rank
- No. 4 of the ten, at roughly 755 MMBOE a year (EIA, 2023, 6:1)
Agency names, form numbers, websites and fees change. Confirm anything you intend to rely on against the agency's own site.
If you only do one thing
The document to pull
Louisiana · start here
The unit order and its Exhibit A plat
In Louisiana the unit is a regulatory creation, not a lease clause — the Commissioner draws it. That means the plat showing your tract inside the unit is a public document with an order number attached, and it is the single clearest answer to "why is my decimal what it is."
- Open SONRIS, the state's oil and gas records system, and find the well by serial number, operator, field or parish.
- Identify the unit the well is assigned to — units are named by sand, zone or formation, not just by well.
- Pull the unit order and its Exhibit A, the plat showing the tract breakdown inside the unit.
- Check your tract's acreage against the unit total — that ratio is your share of the unit before your royalty fraction is applied.
- For ownership itself, go to the parish clerk of court. SONRIS holds wells and units; the clerk holds deeds, leases and servitudes.
Because prescription runs on non-use, a Louisiana mineral owner has a reason to track drilling activity that owners in the other nine states simply do not have.
Worth knowing
What else this agency publishes
Named here rather than linked directly, because deep links into state records systems break more often than the systems do. Search the name from www.dnr.louisiana.gov.
Where it differs from Texas
Not the same as the RRC
Louisiana has a rule no other state on this list has: a mineral servitude prescribes after ten years of non-use. If nobody drills or produces for ten years, severed minerals revert to the surface owner automatically. Minerals cannot be severed forever here.
Before you start
Two things to have in hand
Your legal description
Every search on Louisiana's system wants to know where, and none of them accept a street address as the real answer. Get the section, township and range — or the survey and abstract — off your deed or an old check stub before you open the website. Without it you are guessing.
The API number, once you find it
Every Louisiana well number begins 17. Once you have a well's full API number, write it down: it is the key that works in the state system, in FracFocus, and in every commercial database — and it never changes. Take one apart if you have not seen the structure before.
The thing to remember
The Office of Conservation holds the well and the unit. It does not hold your ownership. Deeds, leases, probates and the chain of title live with the parish clerk of court in the county where the minerals are — and no state oil and gas agency in the country can tell you what you own.