OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GEKERAL . ST.%TE OF TEX.XS 

JOHN CORNYN 

March 7,2002 

Ms. Sandy Smith, Executive Director Opinion No. JC-0475 

Texas Board of Professional Land Surveying 

7701 North Lamar, Suite 400 Re: Authority of the Texas Board of Professional 

Austin, Texas 78752 Land Surveying to require that all proposed oil and 

gas well locations be surveyed by a registered 

professional land surveyor (RQ-0440-JC) 

Dear Ms. Smith: 

You ask whether the Texas Board of Professional Land Surveying (the “Board,‘) may require 

that all proposed well locations submitted to the Texas Railroad Commission be surveyed by a 

registered professional land surveyor. Rules promulgated by the Railroad Commission (the 

“Commission”) require information about well locations to accompany applications for certain oil 

and gas well permits, but they do not require that the locations be surveyed by a registered 

professional land surveyor. The Commission has reasonable discretion to determine what 

information must accompany permit applications filed under Commission rule. If measurements 

determined by a less precise method than professional surveying yield enough information for the 

Commission to implement its rules on oil well permits and oil well spacing, such well locations need 

not be surveyed. 

Your request letter in effect inquires about the present validity of Attorney General Opinion 

JM-418 issued in 1985 in response to an inquiry from the Board.* The Board asked whether a plat 

of a proposed oil or gas well location submitted to the Commission in applications for permits to 

drill, deepen, or plug back a well, must be prepared by a registered land surveyor. See Tex. Att’y 

Gen. Op. No. JM-418 (1985) at 1. The Board in particular inquired about Form W-l, developed by 

the Commission for operators of oil, gas, or geothermal resource wells to use in applying for various 

kinds of permits. Commission rules governing applications for permits generally require the 

application to include a plat showing where the oil or gas well is located. See, e.g., 16 TEX. ADMIN. 

CODE $9 3.5 (2001) (application to drill, deepen, re-enter, or plug back); 3.37 (statewide spacing 

rule); 3.38 (well densities); 3.76 (plat approval for mineral development). A “neat, accurate plat of 

the lease or unit” showing the drilling unit boundary, the surface location of the proposed site, 

section, block, or lot, scale, and other information, must accompany Form W- 1. See INSTRUCTIONS 

TO FORM W-l, RAILROAD COMMISSION OF TEXAS, OIL AND GAS DIVISION (2000), available at 

http://www.rrc.state.tx.us/divisions/og/form-.html; see also 16 TEX. ADMIN. CODE 

‘See Letter from Ms. Sandy Smith, Executive Director, Texas Board of Professional Land Surveying, to 

Honorable John Comyn, Texas Attorney General (Aug. 21, 2001) (on file with Opinion Committee). 
Ms. Sandy Smith - Page 2 (JC-0475) 

5 3.36(d)(2)(B) (2001). The Commission does not define “plat” in its rules, and its use of this term 

does not suggest that a professional surveyor must make the measurements shown thereon. “Plat” 

means a “plan or diagram of anything; esp. a ground-plan of a building or of any part of the earth’s 

surface; a . . . map [or] chart.” XI OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY 993 (2d ed.1989); see also Tex. 

Att’y Gen. Op. No. JM-418 (1985) at 4. 

Thus, although you ask whether the Board has authority to require proposed oil and gas well 

locations to be surveyed by a registered professional land surveyor, your question raises the same 

legal issues addressed in Attorney General Opinion JM-418. It requires us to review the reasoning 

of Attorney General Opinion JM-418 in addition to addressing the Board’s statutory authority to 

regulate land surveying. 

The Professional Land Surveying Practices Act, TEX. REV. CIV. STAT. ANN. art. 5282~ 

(Vernon Supp. 2002)2 (the “Act”) provides that a person may not engage in the practice of 

professional surveying unless he or she is certified, registered, or licensed as provided by its 

provisions. See id. 8 15(a). The Board is authorized to certify surveyors-in-training, register 

professional land surveyors, and license state land surveyors. See id. $3 8(a) (meetings to examine 

approved applicants for certification, registration, or licensing); 15(a) (a person may not practice 

professional surveying or offer to practice professional surveying unless the person is certified, 

registered, or licensed as provided by this chapter). A “[llicensed state land surveyor” is “a surveyor 

licensed by the Texas Board of Professional Land Surveying to survey land in which the state or the 

public free school fund has an interest, or other original surveys, for the purpose of filing field notes 

in the General Land Office.” Id. 8 2(4); see also id. 9 2(3) (defining “state land surveying”), 9 25(a) 

(jurisdiction of licensed state land surveyors). A county surveyor, elected pursuant to article XVI, 

section 44 of the Texas Constitution, must also be licensed or registered by the Board. See Tex. 

Att’y Gen. Op. No. MW-541 (1982) at 2; see also TEX. CONST. art. XVI, 4 44; TEX. REV. CIV. STAT. 

ANN. art. 5282c, § 25(b) (Vernon Supp. 2002). Your request is limited to surveys by a person 

“registered by the board as a registered professional land surveyor” whose authority to survey land 

is defined in section 2( 1) of the Act. TEX. REV. CIV. STAT. ANN. art. 5282~’ $2(l), (2). 

The Board may discipline licensees and registrants and may impose administrative penalties. 

See id. §§ 23,23A, 24. In addition to any other action authorized by law, the Board may institute 

an action in its name against any person to enjoin a violation of the Act or a board rule. See id. 3 

9(b); see also id. 9 23(c) (criminal penalty for engaging in the practice or offering to practice 

professional surveying or state land surveying without being registered or licensed). Finally, the 

Board may adopt “reasonable and necessary rules, regulations and bylaws . . . for the performance 

of its duties in administering this Act and for the purpose of establishing standards of conduct and 

ethics for surveyors registered or licensed under this Act.” Id. 8 9(a). 

2The Profess’ ronal Land Surveying Practices Act, TEX. REV. CIV. STAT. ANN. art. 5282~ (Vernon Supp. 2002), 

will be repealed and reenacted as chapter 107 1 of the Occupations Code by legislation effective on June 1,2003. See 

Act of May 22,2001,77th Leg., R.S., ch. 142 1, $5 1,13,15,2001 Tex. Gen. Laws. 4570,4629,5020. The enactment 

is a nonsubstantive revision of statutes on the licensing and regulation of certain professions and businesses. See id., 

ch. 1421,s 14,200l Tex. Gen. Laws. 4570,502O. 
Ms. Sandy Smith - Page 3 (JC-0475) 

Thus, the Board has authority to regulate as registered professional land surveyors persons 

who engage in professional surveying as defined by the Act. It has no authority to regulate as 

registered professional land surveyors those persons whose activities in measuring land do not 

constitute “professional surveying.” Seegenerally State v. Pub. UtiZ. Comm ‘II, 883 S.W.2d 190,194 

(Tex. 1994) ( a d ministrative agency, as creation of legislature, has only those powers expressly 

conferred and those necessary to accomplish duties); R.R. Comm’n v. Lone Star Gas Co., 844 

S. W.2d 679 (Tex. 1992) (rules and regulations adopted by an agency must be within clear intent of 

statutory authority conferred on the agency). The Act defines “professional surveying” to mean 

the practice of land, boundary, or property surveying or other similar 

professional practices. The term includes any service or work the 

adequate performance of which involves the application of special 

knowledge of the principles of geodesy,3 mathematics, related applied 

and physical sciences, and relevant laws to the measurement or 

location of sites, points, lines, angles, elevations, natural features, and 

existing man-made works in the air, on the surface of the earth, 

within underground workings, and on the beds of bodies of water for 

the purpose of determining areas and volumes for: 

(A) the location of real property boundaries; 

or 

(B) the platting and layout of lands and subdivisions of land; 

(C) the preparation and perpetuation of maps, record plats, 

field note records, easements, and real property descriptions that 

represent those surveys. To the extent these services of types of 

creative work meet this definition, the term includes consultation, 

investigation, evaluation, analysis, planning, providing an expert 

surveying opinion or testimony, and mapping. 

TEX. REV. CIV. STAT. ANN. art. 5282~’ 5 2( 1) (Vernon Supp. 2002) (footnote added). “This Act does 

not require the use of a registered land surveyor to establish an easement or a construction estimate 

“‘Geodesy” is “a branch of applied mathematics concerned with the determination of the size and shape of the 

earth and the exact positions of points on its surface and with the description of variations of its gravity field.” 

WEBSTER’S NINTH NEW COLLEGIATE DICTIONARY 5 13 (9th ed. 1990). 
Ms. Sandy Smith - Page 4 (JC-0475) 

which does not involve the monumentation,4 delineation, or preparation of a metes and bounds5 

description.” See id. 5 3A (footnote added). 

The statutory definition of “professional surveying” refers in technical terms to the special 

body of knowledge used by surveyors in determining areas and volumes for locating real property 

boundaries, platting and laying out land and subdivisions, and preparing maps and other 

documentation that represent the surveys. See id. 8 2( 1). A non-statutory definition of “surveying” 

is phrased in less technical terms and illustrates some of the ways in which surveying is typically 

used: 

Surveying is the art of using scientific principles to make 

comparatively large measurements to a required accuracy. Surveying 

has two basic functions: (1) to measure what exists, to determine 

where it is located, and usually to prepare a map to show the results 

of these data from which a plan or a boundary description can be 

made; and (2) to establish marks to guide construction according to 

a plan or to show the boundaries according to a description or other 

data. 

26 THE ENCYCLOPEDIA AMERICANA 70 (1976) (defining “surveying”). The use of surveying 

“extends from measuring property boundaries and making a plot plan for a house to great 

construction projects like canals, railroads, and highways.” Id. 

If compliance with Commission rules on depicting the location of proposed oil or gas wells 

requires a person to engage in “professional surveying,” that person must be registered by the Board 

as a professional land surveyor. Attorney- General Opinion JM-4 18 addressed the defmition of 

“public surveying,” the statutory predecessor of the definition of “professional surveying.” See Act 

of May 23, 1979, 66th Leg., R.S., ch. 597, § 2(l), 1979 Tex. Gen. Laws 1261 (defining “public 

surveying”), amended by Act ofMay28,1989,71st Leg., R.S., ch. 1091, § 1,1989 Tex. Gen. Laws 

4460, 4461 (defining “professional surveying”). The definition of “public surveying” was briefer 

and less technical than the definition of “professional surveying” in article 5282~ of the Revised 

Civil Statutes. “Public surveying” was 

the practice for compensation of determining the boundaries or the 

topography of real property or of delineating routes, spaces, or sites 

in real property for public or private use by using relevant elements 

of law, research, measurement, analysis, computation, mapping, and 

land description writing. Public surveying includes the practice for 

41n the context of surveying law, a “monument” is “[a]ny object, natural or artificial, fixed permanently in the 

soil and referred to in a document as a means of ascertaining the location of a tract of land or any part of its boundaries.” 

IX OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY 1045 (2d ed. 1989). 

“‘Metes and bounds” are defined as the “boundary lines of land, with their terminal points and angles.” Lej7er 

v. City of Dallas, 177 S.W.2d 23 1,234 (Tex. Civ. App.-Dallas 1943, no writ). 
Ms. Sandy Smith - Page 5 (JC-0475) 

compensation of land, boundary, or property surveying or other 

similar professional practices. 

See Act of May 23, 1979,66th Leg., R.S., ch. 597, 9 2(l), 1979 Tex. Gen. Laws 1261. 

Attorney General Opinion JM-418 addressed the meaning of “surveying” by looking at the 

legislature’s purpose in regulating surveyors. It concluded that Texas had historically “regulated 

surveyors to ensure that land would be correctly measured and boundaries correctly determined 

where a high degree of accuracy is necessary to protect the public in land transactions and to ensure 

the reliability of land titles.” Tex. Att’y Gen. Op. No. JM-418 (1985) at 4. It also concluded that 

the statutory definition of public surveying did not “encompass all measurements taken within 

defined boundaries or all graphic representations of those measurements.” Id. 

We find that these two conclusions of Attorney General Opinion JM-418 are consistent with 

legislative decisions reflected in statutes requiring a survey of land and those authorizing a less exact 

method of measuring land. Texas statutes require land surveys where great precision in measuring 

land is necessary, for example, to establish boundaries for political subdivisions, to lay out roads, 

or to identify property subject to a sale. Surveys of land in which the state or the permanent school 

fund has an interest must be done by a licensed state land surveyor. See TEX. REV. CIV. STAT. ANN. 

art. 5282c, 8 2(4) (Vernon Supp. 2002); see also TEX. NAT. RES. CODE ANN. ch. 21 (Vernon 2001) 

(survey of state’s public lands). A survey to establish county boundary lines must be made by “an 

experienced and competent registered professional land surveyor.” TEX. LOC. GOVT. CODE ANN. 

8 72.001 (Vernon 1999); see also TEX. TRANSP. CODE ANN. $0 254.009 (Vernon 1999) (survey of 

county road drainage system), 3 14.013 (survey of municipal property to be condemned for highway 

or other proposed improvement). Land surveys of privately owned land are statutorily required in 

some circumstances. A commissioners court may require “lot and block monumentation” in a 

subdivision plat to be set by a registered professional surveyor before the plat is recorded. TEX. LOC. 

GOV’T CODE ANN. 9 232.003(9) (Vernon Supp. 2002). A person selling land must provide the 

purchaser “a survey, which was completed within the past year, or plat of a current survey of the real 

property,” before an executory contract for the sale of land is signed. TEX. PROP. CODE ANN. 0 

5.069(a)( 1) (Vernon Supp. 2002). 

Other statutes, however, identify a boundary or property location by relying on land surveys 

that have already been done and do not require a new survey. See TEX. LOC. GOV’T CODE ANN. 

8 376.044 (Vernon 1999) (territory in Westchase Area Management District described by reference 

to specific surveys, a recorded deed, and a recorded subdivision plat); TEX. TRANSP. CODE ANN. 

5 361.134 (Vernon 1999) (real property acquired by Texas Turnpike Authority is to be described by 

locating boundary line with reference to lot and block lines of recorded subdivisions, or survey lines 

and comers). Thus, in some circumstances, the legislature has determined that a new site may be 

located on an existing survey. 

The courts have also relied on methods other than surveying to measure land. Where the 

distance between a liquor store and a church was at issue, the court accepted measurements written 

on a blueprint map as evidence of the distance. See Robinson v. City ofDallas, 193 S.W.2d 821,822 
Ms. Sandy Smith - Page 6 (JC-0475) 

(Tex. Civ. App.-Austin 1946, writ refd); see also EzzeZZ v. Tex. Alcoholic Beverage Comm ‘n, 528 

S.W.2d 888,891 (Tex. Civ. App.-Fort Worth, 1975, no writ) (handwritten measurements on plat). 

We consider the plats of proposed oil and gas well locations that Commission rules require 

to be filed with the Commission in connection with various permit applications. The rules are issued 

under the Commission’s authority to make and enforce rules to conserve oil and gas and to provide 

for the issuance of permits where necessary or incident to enforcing rules to prevent waste. See TEX. 

NAT. RES. CODE ANN. $0 85.201-.202 (Vernon 2001); see also 16 TEX. ADMIN. CODE ch. 3 (2001) 

(Oil and Gas Division). The Board ofProfessional Land Surveying believes that requiring such plats 

to be prepared by a registered surveyor would best serve the public interest. 

The Commission, however, does not require that a registered surveyor prepare the 

plats submitted to it. It submitted its reasons for this in connection with Attorney General Opinion 

JM-418, stating that the position of a new well can be determined by measurement from an existing 

marker and this location may be recorded on a map based on a prior survey. See Tex. Att’y Gen. Op. 

No. JM-418 (1985) at l-2. Thus, the plats do not establish boundaries, but measure from existing 

boundaries. The Commission further explained that the plats submitted with applications 

“are not used in the chain of title, but enable Commission staff to determine if the proposed 

well location complies with the Commission’s spacing rules. Once the application is 

approved, the Commission’s mapping section plots the proposed well on the county maps in the 

map room.” Id. at 2. Computerized maps are now used for this purpose. See 

http://www.rrc.state.tx.us./divisions/og/maps/mapinfo.html. On occasion, “the exact location of a 

well may become a pivotal issue in a contested case. The parties usually resort to a certified plat to 

settle this fact issue.” Tex. Att’y Gen. Op. No. JM-418 (1985) at 2. 

The Legislature has granted the Commission broad discretion in administering laws 

regulating oil and natural gas. See R.R. Comm ‘n v. Lone Star Gas Co., 844 S.W.2d 679,686 (Tex. 

1992). The Commission has issued rules under its statutory authority to prevent waste of oil and gas 

resources, and pursuant to these rules, it requires plats ofwell locations to accompany specific permit 

applications. It is within the Commission’s reasonable discretion to determine what information it 

needs to carry out its authority to prevent waste and to implement the rules it has issued for this 

purpose. See Stewart v. IfumbZe Oil & Refining Co., 377 S.W.2d 830,832 (Tex. 1964) (question as 

to proper location of oil well is for the Railroad Commission as an administrative body, not for the 

courts). The Commission has apparently decided that measurements determined by some means 

other than professional surveying yield enough information for it to implement its rules on oil well 

permits and oil well spacing. As we have pointed out, certain Texas statutes identify boundaries or 

property locations by reference to existing land surveys, and we do not believe that a court would 

find that the Railroad Commission has abused its discretion by accepting plats that also use the 

method. We accordingly conclude that compliance with Railroad Commission rules on depicting 

the location of proposed oil or gas wells does not require the work of a “professional survey,” and 

it need not be performed by a professional land surveyor registered by the Board. We affirm 

Attorney General Opinion JM-418 (1985). 
Ms. Sandy Smith - Page 7 (JC-0475) 

SUMMARY 

The Texas Board of Professional Land Surveying is 

authorized to regulate persons who engage in surveying as defined by 

the Professional Land Surveying Practices Act, article 5282~ of the 

Revised Civil Statutes. See TEX. REV. CIV. STAT. ANN. art. 5282~ 

(Vernon Supp. 2002). The Railroad Commission has promulgated 

rules requiring plats showing well locations to accompany 

applications for certain oil and gas well permits, but the rules do not 

require that the locations be surveyed by a registered professional 

land surveyor. The Commission has reasonable discretion to 

determine what information must accompany permit applications 

filed under Commission rule. If plats showing well locations 

determined by a less precise method than professional surveying yield 

enough information for the Commission to implement its rules, the 

well locations need not be surveyed. We affirm Attorney General 

Opinion JM-0418 (1985). 

Attorney General of Texas 

HOWARD G. BALDWIN, JR. 

First Assistant Attorney General 

NANCY FULLER 

Deputy Attorney General - General Counsel 

SUSAN DENMON GUSKY 

Chair, Opinion Committee 

Susan L. Garrison 

Assistant Attorney General, Opinion Committee