No. 7 of ten · API state code 47
West Virginia: the WVDEP.
Office of Oil and Gas, Department of Environmental Protection — the agency that decides where wells go in West Virginia. Here is what it holds, what it doesn't, and the one document worth your afternoon.
The agency
Where it came from
West Virginia, like Pennsylvania, puts oil and gas inside an environmental department rather than a conservation commission — but unlike Pennsylvania it has a modern unitization statute for horizontal wells, enacted in 2022. That statute is the reason a West Virginia owner has a document to ask for at all.
- Agency
- Office of Oil and Gas, Department of Environmental Protection
- Sits within
- West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection
- Also worth knowing
- A separate Oil and Gas Conservation Commission handles deeper formations
- Website
- dep.wv.gov/oil-and-gas/
- Main plays
- Marcellus · Utica
- API state code
- 47 — every well number in the state starts with it
- Pooling / unitization
- Horizontal unitization (2022)
- Ad valorem on minerals
- Ad valorem: yes — confirm the current treatment locally
- Records access
- Free
- Deeds & leases at
- County Clerk
- Production rank
- No. 7 of the ten, at roughly 544 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
West Virginia · start here
The horizontal well unitization application and order
The statute governing horizontal well units requires the application to include a plat showing every permitted, active well in the unit, a listing of all oil and gas tracts inside it with their sizes and lease status, and the names and last known addresses of the royalty owners of the target formation in each tract. That is a remarkably complete picture of a unit, and it is public.
- Find the well first — use the WVDEP well and production search or the TAGIS mapping site, which shows approximate horizontal lateral paths.
- Note the API number. In West Virginia it behaves, as the state's own landowner groups put it, something like a social security number for the well.
- Locate the unitization application or order for the horizontal well unit your tract sits in.
- Read the tract listing and the royalty owner listing. Confirm your tract's acreage and that your name and address are right.
- Cross-check production against the WVDEP production data, which the state makes available to the public free of charge.
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 dep.wv.gov/oil-and-gas/.
Where it differs from Texas
Not the same as the RRC
West Virginia's unitization filing names royalty owners by tract. Texas has no equivalent public filing — the closest Texas comes is the plat, which shows acreage but never names you.
Before you start
Two things to have in hand
Your legal description
Every search on West Virginia'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 West Virginia well number begins 47. 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 WVDEP 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.