No. 2 of ten · API state code 37
Pennsylvania: the DEP.
Department of Environmental Protection, Office of Oil and Gas Management — which is not a conservation commission at all. Here is what it holds, what it doesn't, and the one document worth your afternoon.
The agency
Where it came from
Pennsylvania's oil industry is the oldest in the country by a wide margin — the Drake well came in at Titusville in 1859, thirty-two years before Texas created the Railroad Commission and seventy-six years before the states wrote the interstate compact. By the time the conservation-agency model was invented in the Southwest, Pennsylvania had already boomed, peaked and declined without one. Oil and gas here sits inside an environmental agency, not a conservation commission.
- Agency
- Department of Environmental Protection, Office of Oil and Gas Management
- Sits within
- Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection
- Also worth knowing
- No conservation commission has ever existed for the shallow or shale plays
- Main plays
- Marcellus · Utica · the original 1859 shallow oil fields
- API state code
- 37 — every well number in the state starts with it
- Pooling / unitization
- No general pooling
- Ad valorem on minerals
- No severance tax — confirm the current treatment locally
- Records access
- Free
- Deeds & leases at
- County Recorder of Deeds
- Production rank
- No. 2 of the ten, at roughly 1,270 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
Pennsylvania · start here
There is no state unit plat — pull the DEP well record, then go to the courthouse
This is the one state of the ten where the answer is partly "the state does not have it." Pennsylvania has no general compulsory pooling for the Marcellus, so no operator ever has to file a unit with the Commonwealth for approval. The unit exists only in a document the operator records at the county — a declaration of pooling or unit designation.
- Open PA Oil and Gas Mapping and find the well by county, municipality, operator, or by dropping a pin on your address.
- Note the permit number and API number, then follow the link through to the Oil and Gas Reports site for production and waste reporting.
- For the unit itself, go to your county Recorder of Deeds and search the operator's name for a recorded declaration of pooling or unit designation. That instrument, not any state filing, is what defines your unit.
- While you are there, pull your own lease. DEP states plainly that it does not regulate lease agreements, audit payments, or read meters — the lease is the only thing that governs what you are owed.
The narrow exception: the Oil and Gas Conservation Law of 1961 does allow spacing and pooling orders, but only for wells drilled below the Onondaga horizon. Those cases are rare and essentially never involve Marcellus wells.
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.pa.gov/agencies/dep/programs-and-services/oil-and-gas.
Where it differs from Texas
The exception
Texas gives you the unit for free, from the state. Pennsylvania makes you go find it in the deed records — because in Pennsylvania the unit is a private contract, not a regulatory act.
Before you start
Two things to have in hand
Your legal description
Every search on Pennsylvania'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 Pennsylvania well number begins 37. 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 DEP holds the well and the unit. It does not hold your ownership. Deeds, leases, probates and the chain of title live with the county recorder of deeds in the county where the minerals are — and no state oil and gas agency in the country can tell you what you own.