No. 5 of ten · API state code 35
Oklahoma: the OCC.
Oklahoma Corporation Commission, Oil and Gas Conservation Division — the agency that decides where wells go in Oklahoma. Here is what it holds, what it doesn't, and the one document worth your afternoon.
The agency
Where it came from
Like Texas, Oklahoma's oil and gas regulator is an elected utility commission that grew into the job — it began regulating oil and gas in 1914. Spacing orders started addressing owners who could not agree in 1935, and pooling in something close to its modern form began in 1947.
- Agency
- Oklahoma Corporation Commission, Oil and Gas Conservation Division
- Sits within
- Elected three-member Corporation Commission
- Also worth knowing
- Began regulating oil and gas in 1914
- Main plays
- Anadarko · SCOOP · STACK · Arkoma
- API state code
- 35 — every well number in the state starts with it
- Pooling / unitization
- Forced pooling: heavily used
- Ad valorem on minerals
- Ad valorem: no — confirm the current treatment locally
- Records access
- Free
- Deeds & leases at
- County Clerk
- Production rank
- No. 5 of the ten, at roughly 628 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
Oklahoma · start here
The spacing and pooling order for your section
This is the best single document any of the ten states produces for a mineral owner, and it is free. When an operator force-pools a drilling unit, the resulting order lists the names and last known addresses of every mineral owner in that unit — including owners the operator could not locate. If you are trying to find yourself, or a relative, in a unit, start here.
- Open the OCC Well Data Finder and locate your section by legal description, or find the well by name, API number or operator.
- Search the case filing system for cases covering your section — spacing, pooling, increased density and location exception are the four that matter.
- Pull the pooling order and read the owner list. Check whether your name, or an ancestor's, appears — and whether the address they used is current.
- Use the imaging system for the well documents themselves, including Form 1002A, the completion report.
- If you were pooled and never paid, check the Mineral Owners Escrow Account — that is where unclaimed proceeds from pooling orders are held.
Filings and cases from before 21 March 2022 live in the legacy case and archived document systems rather than the current one — if a search comes back empty for an older well, look there before concluding nothing exists.
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 oklahoma.gov/occ/divisions/oil-gas.html.
Where it differs from Texas
Not the same as the RRC
Oklahoma force-pools routinely, and the order names owners. Texas pools mostly by lease clause, and no comparable public list of owners is generated.
Before you start
Two things to have in hand
Your legal description
Every search on Oklahoma'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 Oklahoma well number begins 35. 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 OCC holds the well and the unit. It does not hold your ownership. Deeds, leases, probates and the chain of title live with the county clerk in the county where the minerals are — and no state oil and gas agency in the country can tell you what you own.