Oil and Gas Are a Big Deal in McMullen County

Drillers first hit oil here in the early 1900s, and the county has been pumping ever since. Today its brush country is dotted with wells and worked by a long list of operators. So when you buy land in McMullen County, the question of who owns what's underneath matters as much as the fence lines. Texas lets the mineral estate split off from the surface, and around here it usually has. A rancher decades back may have sold or held back the minerals, and that severance follows the dirt forever.

Every one of those wells leaves a paper trail with the Railroad Commission of Texas, which permits the drilling, logs the production, and records the plugging when a well runs dry. You can pull up that history tract by tract on the Commission's website: permits, who's producing, how much. None of it is secret. Walking a deal without knowing whether you're buying the minerals, a fraction of them, or just the grass on top is how people end up surprised at the closing table.