The School Land Board, the five-member panel that sets what oil companies pay to drill under land owned by the Texas public school fund, meets Oct. 20 in a specially called session to open the bids from that same morning’s online lease sale and to clear 29 applications from operators working the Permian Basin, South Texas and the East Texas fields.
The 29 fall into two kinds, and both are the plumbing of how a modern well touches state land. Sixteen are pooling applications, which let a company fold several state leases — and sometimes a strip of highway or a riverbed — into one drilling unit. Thirteen are production sharing agreements, which let a single well draw from more than one lease and split the royalty by acreage. EOG Resources, Mewbourne, Coterra, Devon, Diamondback, Marathon, Magnolia and Permian Resources are all on the list, in Reeves, Loving, Webb, Panola, Harrison, Milam and Karnes counties among others. One EOG unit in Webb County alone pools parts of a U.S. highway and ten named roads.
The board is chaired by the land commissioner, Dawn Buckingham, and filled out by four citizens the governor appoints with Senate consent. Under the chapter that creates it, two of those four must be picked from lists of nominees the State Board of Education sends over, and at least one has to live in a county of fewer than 200,000 people. The money from what the board approves runs to the Permanent School Fund, the land-and-mineral endowment that pays out to public schools each year. Appointed members serve two-year terms; all four current ones were reappointed in April.
Three items sit outside the oil and gas routine. The board votes on a resolution letting the commissioner issue leases for coastal erosion projects on school fund land without bringing each one back for a vote. It takes up the disposal of about seven acres in El Paso County. And it clears a handful of small coastal matters — two cabin assignments on the Laguna Madre, easement renewals for the Houston Yacht Club on Galveston Bay and a company on the Neches River, and a 20.5-acre right-of-way along old U.S. 80 in Harrison County. The notice does not say what any of them are worth.
Anyone wanting to speak has to sign the roster in person before the meeting starts; the webcast that goes up the morning of the meeting runs one way only.
Meeting at a glance
- When
- 10:00 AM, Tuesday, October 20, 2026. TRD 2026006035 was filed October 12 at 12:50 p.m.
- Where
- Stephen F. Austin Building, Room 170, 1700 N. Congress Ave., Austin.
- Governing body & chair
- School Land Board — the land commissioner plus four citizens appointed by the governor with Senate consent, serving two-year terms. Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham chairs it by statute.
- Format
- A specially called meeting with a long consent agenda. Public comment is in person only, on posted items, and the chair may cap speaking time.
- Live video
- A one-way webcast link is posted on the land office’s website the morning of the meeting. No remote comment.
- Full agenda
- Secretary of State Open Meeting Viewer
Board members
- Dawn Buckingham — chair; land commissioner; physician and former state senator.
- Gilbert “Gil” Burciaga — Austin; co-founder and board member, ARM Energy.
- Marcella Burke — Houston; energy and environmental lawyer, Burke Law Group.
- Brad Curlee — Round Rock; retired banking center president, Prosperity Bank.
- David Eyler — Midland; petroleum geologist, owner of Milagro Resources.
The four appointed members, their cities and their occupations are from Governor Abbott’s April 8, 2026 reappointment release; their terms run to August 29, 2027. The board’s structure, the two-year terms and the land commissioner’s chairmanship are from Natural Resources Code Chapter 32. The land office’s own board page would not return readable text, so the roster was not cross-checked against it. No minutes were available to confirm recent attendance.