Natural Resource Management—Mineral Leases

University Lands is a division within the University of Texas System and is responsible for managing 2.1 million acres in 19 west Texas counties. Oil was discovered here in 1923 with the completion of the Santa Rita well. Since then, University Lands has manually managed thousands of tract and mineral leases by hand. The Center for Geospatial Technology at Texas Tech University and University Lands worked together to design and build a geodatabase and GIS applications for mineral lease management.

An ArcSDE geodatabase was developed to incorporate mineral lease, oil, and gas well data. To build the geodatabase, 22 large-format blue-line maps were scanned and rectified. Cartographers captured current leaseholder names from the maps and geocoded oil and gas wells from available coordinates. The status of the wells was cross-checked against the University Lands well database and Railroad Commission data to ensure accuracy. Every six months, a mineral lease sale is held and a list of available tracts is automatically converted from textual legal descriptions into available tract polygons for bidders to use.

Courtesy of Lucia Barbato and Kevin Mulligan, Center for Geospatial Technology, Texas Tech University.