Oil and Gas Permits

In South Dakota, oil and gas development comes under the Minerals, Mining, and Superfund Program of the Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources (DANR). Requests that go through public notice, such as spacing, pooling and unitization requests and those under the Notice of Recommendation procedure, go to the Board of Minerals and Environment for a hearing if they are contested. DANR says every petroleum production well needs an application for permit to drill, and every disposal or enhanced recovery well tied to oil and gas work needs an Underground Injection Control Class II permit. Its permitting guide says state law, SDCL chapter 45-9, charges the Board and the department with promoting oil and gas development while preventing waste and protecting correlative rights, groundwater, the environment and human health.

In a Phase I ESA

ASTM E1527-21 does not name well records among its standard record sources. They are worth checking on any property with possible oil and gas history, since a well can leave tanks, pits, flow lines and produced water behind. That is advice for the search, not something DANR says.

• The status words have set meanings. DANR's page headed as a list of drilling permits issued from 2009 to 2024 shows, in the copy this handbook saved, permits issued in 2019 and from 2021 to 2024, each linked to a scanned image, and gives each well a status from a key: never drilled (the permit ran out), P&A for a well plugged and abandoned, TA for one temporarily abandoned, SI for one shut in, new permit (issued but not yet spudded, with an asterisk where an extension was granted), new drill (spudded), new well (drilled but not yet producing), producing, injecting, and converted (turned into a water well). Read a status against the key rather than guessing from the abbreviation.
• Many field changes go through a sundry notice. DANR lists the actions the Department Secretary or a designee may approve on a sundry notice, among them plugging procedures, temporary abandonment, soil remediation techniques, putting produced water on roads to keep dust down, building produced water handling facilities, and converting a mud pit to an evaporation pit. For a well site, ask whether the file holds sundry notices of these kinds and the plugging report (Form 7).
• Field waste has limits. DANR describes legislation that took effect July 1, 2013 (SDCL 34A-6-113 and 34A-6-114). It bars storing or disposing of liquid oil and gas field waste in earthen pits or open receptacles, except where the facility is directly tied to developing a specific well or producing property, while still letting an operator store liquid waste in an open receptacle that serves a specific well, field or unit. The same legislation bars disposing of field waste whose radium-226 plus radium-228 is more than 5 picocuries per gram above the background level at the solid waste facility.
• Recent technical data can be withheld for a time. DANR says that under ARSD 74:12:02:17 it keeps an operator's logs, test reports, core analyses, water analyses, production data and similar data confidential for six months if the operator asks in writing.
• A spill goes to the spill line. DANR's oil and gas page sends spill reports to the Inspection, Compliance, and Remediation Program, and its spill page says a crude oil discharge in field activities above one barrel (42 gallons) must be reported. See Spills Reporting.

DANR also says it does not regulate mineral rights or leasing and has no data on them, and that the Register of Deeds in the county where the land lies should hold the filed mineral rights documents.

The program's statute is SDCL 45-9 and its rules are ARSD 74:12.

Where to look a site up

• DANR's oil and gas page links the South Dakota Geological Survey's Map-Based Data Source, which it says shows drill sites permitted lately and the oil and gas test holes that exist near a property, with links to information on each drill site. DANR's Data & Mapping page also links an Oil, Gas and Injection Well Database and an Oil and Gas Resources web map with the state's oil and gas permits and wells. This handbook did not open them.
• DANR's Oil and Gas Data and Reports page holds the forms and a list headed as drilling permits issued from 2009 to 2024; the copy this handbook saved shows only 2019 and 2021 to 2024.
• DANR's Data and Reports page offers data downloads: the Monthly Production Reports for Oil & Gas Wells, the Monthly Injection Reports for Water, Air, and Gas Injection Wells, a geodatabase of wells, recovery units and field boundaries, and oil and gas well maps. A legal disclaimer on the page, in the State's name, limits the use of that data to informational and educational purposes. This handbook carries nothing from those downloads.
• The Minerals, Mining, and Superfund Program is at (605) 773-4201. DANR's forms page sends correspondence, permit applications and reports to the program at 221 Mall Drive, Suite #201, Rapid City, SD 57701.

Getting the file

DANR's page footer links Request Public Records, an address on the state's sd.gov portal that this handbook did not open. The pages read do not say where well files are kept for public review or what a request must include.

Sources

South Dakota Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources pages, read October 13, 2026:

• South Dakota Minerals and Mining Program - Oil and Gas, no modified date shown.
• South Dakota Minerals and Mining Program - Oil and Gas Data and Reports, no modified date shown.
• South Dakota Minerals and Mining Program - Data and Reports, no modified date shown; cited only for the names of its downloads and DANR's limit on their use.
• South Dakota Minerals and Mining Program, no modified date shown.
• DANR / Data & Mapping, no modified date shown.
• South Dakota Inspection Compliance & Remediation (the Spills Reporting page), no modified date shown.
• One-Stop Permitting and Regulation Guide (2025 Edition) | SD DANR, no modified date shown; its opening letter is dated July 2026.