Buying Land in Howard County, Texas

Where the Ogallala runs out and the Permian Basin begins

Howard County occupies a genuinely distinctive spot on the map of Texas water and energy geology: the Ogallala Aquifer, which underlies parts of eight states and has been severely depleted by decades of High Plains irrigation pumping, reaches close to its southernmost limit here, in the same area where the Permian Basin -- one of the most productive oil fields in the world -- reaches its northern fringe. Rural households near Big Spring rely on individual domestic wells tapping the Ogallala for drinking water and daily use, since municipal water lines don't reach every part of the county. That overlap between an already-stressed aquifer and an oil field with a large and growing appetite for water is not a hypothetical tension -- it's the subject of a specific, documented local dispute.

Charles and Loyce Phillips, longtime residents of a rural Howard County neighborhood, noticed new water wells being drilled nearby, football-field-sized water pits appearing at the edge of cotton fields, and water lines running along county roads -- signs, they concluded, that a company called West Texas H2O was developing the area as a commercial water source for the Permian Basin's fracking operations. Concerned the new pumping could lower their own water table, the Phillipses filed a petition in late 2016, gathering signatures from 72 neighbors, asking the Permian Basin Underground Water Conservation District (PBUWCD) to investigate and help stop the overuse. According to reporting on the outcome, the district did not place limits on the company's pumping and was unable to get West Texas H2O to turn over the water-level monitoring data and other documentation it had reportedly agreed to provide. For anyone counting on a domestic well in this part of Howard County, that outcome is worth taking seriously: it shows the district's practical willingness and ability to intervene against a large commercial pumping operation has real limits here. See the standalone well-water page for the fuller account.

An actively drilled part of the Permian Basin

Howard County sits in the eastern Midland Basin, one of the two main sub-basins of the Permian Basin, where the Wolfcamp and Spraberry formations have supported some of the most productive horizontal oil wells in Texas. As of this research, industry permit-tracking data showed roughly 12,843 wells that have produced in the county and 419 recent drilling permits, with major operators including Grayrock Energy, Surge Operating, Diamondback Energy, Occidental Petroleum, and ExxonMobil (via its 2024 acquisition of Pioneer Natural Resources) active here. For a land buyer, that level of activity means mineral ownership, existing leases, surface-use agreements, and nearby infrastructure (well pads, pipelines, produced-water handling) are all worth confirming directly for a specific parcel -- both the value a mineral estate might carry and the practical effect an active well pad or water-hauling operation nearby could have on day-to-day use of the surface.

What this research could not confirm

This research could not confirm whether Howard County holds TCEQ authorized-agent status for OSSF (septic) permitting, or locate a posted Howard County subdivision ordinance describing local platting requirements. Rather than guess, both are flagged here as open questions -- confirm directly with Howard County (and, if the county is not an authorized agent, with TCEQ's applicable regional office) before budgeting for a septic system or planning a land split.