The Railroad Commission of Texas issued 660original drilling permits in August, up from the butcontinuing the trend of lagging well behind year-ago numbers.

Of the August total, 512 permits were to drillnew oil or gas wells, 140 were for recompletions of wellbores and eight were tore-enter plugged wellbores. The permits included 203 for oil-only drilling, 24for gas-only drilling and 392 for oil and gas drilling. InAugust 2015, the state oil and gas regulator issued 864 drilling permits.

The commission said it processed 545 oil, 223gas and 46 injection well completions in August. In July, 568 oil, 243 gas and44 injection well completions were processed. In August 2015, the commissionreported 1,113 oil, 172 gas and 36 injection well completions. For theyear, well completions in the state were 6,558 behind 2015's total as of theend of August.

The Midland District, which covers much of thePermian Basin, was the busiest region, with 226 oil well completions and 18 gaswell completions. TheRefugio District led in gas completions in August with 62.