Energy & Critical Minerals · Regulatory
Permit applications and protests, Rule 37 and 38 exceptions, Rule 82 brine production permits, Rule 46 geothermal injection permits, operator compliance, and hearings before the Commission and SOAH — with the title work run alongside.
The Railroad Commission of Texas decides who gets to drill, where, how densely, and under what conditions — and, under 2023 legislation and its 2025 brine rule, its role now extends to closed-loop geothermal wells and brine production. We represent operators, applicants, and protestants before the Commission and in the district-court proceedings that sometimes follow.
Drilling permits (Form W-1), Rule 82 brine production permits, Rule 46 geothermal and geopressured injection permits (Form GT-5), disposal permits, and the supporting plats, surveys, and organizational filings.
Prosecuting and defending protests to drilling, spacing, density, pooling, and injection applications before the RRC Hearings Division and SOAH — standing, scope, the merits, exceptions, and judicial review.
Advising on which program governs a project that recovers minerals from geothermal or produced fluid, and preparing the corresponding filings.
Spacing and density exception applications and protests, including the geological and engineering case and expert coordination.
Rule 82 (16 TAC §3.82) brine production permits and Class V spent-brine return wells; Rule 46 (16 TAC §3.46) injection permits for geothermal and geopressured energy-storage wells; Class II disposal and enhanced-recovery permits; and area-of-review work.
P-5 organization reports, financial assurance, inactive-well and plugging obligations, severance and seal orders, and enforcement responses.
Coordination between Commission proceedings and the district-court title actions that determine the right to drill — the Commission decides permits, not title, and the two tracks must be run together.
Field rule applications and amendments, unit and pooling designations, and MIPA-related proceedings.
Motions for rehearing and judicial review of Commission orders in Travis County district court.
The Commission's statutory charge is the prevention of waste and the conservation and orderly development of the State's resources (Natural Resources Code §§85.201–.202), and a well-prepared application is framed with that charge in view. In a protested docket, four questions usually organize the work:
The brine production rule (Statewide Rule 82, 16 TAC §3.82, effective February 2025) and the Commission's expanded geothermal program are new enough that the first permits and dockets are shaping how the geothermal–brine interface will be regulated in the East Texas Smackover. Applicants benefit from counsel who has read the adoption order and the comment record, understands the Rule 46 / Rule 82 purpose test and the pending EPA Class V primacy question, and can anticipate staff's classification questions rather than react to them.
The Commission sets the matter for hearing before its Hearings Division (or, in some cases, SOAH). Both sides exchange exhibits and testimony, the examiner hears the case, and a proposal for decision goes to the Commissioners. We handle both sides — prosecuting protests for offset operators and mineral owners, and defending applications for operators — and much of the value is in the pre-hearing work: the exhibit set, the expert testimony, and the settlement conversation the hearing date makes possible.
Statewide Rule 37 sets minimum spacing between wells and from lease and unit lines. A well that cannot meet those distances needs an exception, granted to prevent waste or protect correlative rights, and offset owners are entitled to notice and can protest. Rule 38 governs well density within a proration unit and has its own exception process. We prepare exception applications and the supporting geological and engineering case, and we protest them when a client's correlative rights are at stake.
Yes. Brine production permits under Statewide Rule 82 (16 TAC §3.82), Class V spent-brine return wells (with EPA coordination while the Commission's Class V primacy for brine is pending), Rule 46 (16 TAC §3.46) injection permits for geothermal and geopressured wells, Class II disposal and enhanced-recovery permits, and closed-loop geothermal wells under 16 TAC Chapter 6 are all Commission matters we handle, as is the threshold question of which program a mineral-recovering geothermal project falls under. More on brine permitting · more on geothermal.
Hearings are conducted in Austin, increasingly by videoconference. Our office is in Flower Mound in the Dallas–Fort Worth area; we appear in Austin as needed and there is no requirement for locally based counsel. What matters is knowing the Commission's rules and its examiners, which we do.