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Right of Way · Eminent Domain &Oncor now holds a certificate for 181.6 miles of 765-kilovolt line, awarded by the Public Utility Commission of Texas on August 28, 2026. The route leaves Longshore Switch about 4.5 miles west of Forsan in Howard County and ends at Drill Hole Switch, some 6 miles west of US 285 near the Culberson–Reeves county line. Eight Permian Basin counties sit in its path. Out here a corridor rarely crosses bare ground — it crosses surface that may already carry oil and gas leases, gathering and saltwater lines, caliche roads and pad sites, and each of those bears on what the easement is worth. Below: where the line actually runs, what the 200-foot strip takes, and where first offers on this route tend to fall short.
Almost every condemnation case is a fight about a number, not about the law.
Almost every condemnation case is a fight about a number, not about the law.
A photo of the offer is enough — a senior consultant reads it and tells you what we see.
Text (469) 484-7960 →Four documented matters, each traced from the original offer letter to final settlement — two utility easements and two highway condemnations, labelled on each. Not an average and not a prediction; when we look at yours and think the number is close to right, we tell you so. National ROW is a right-of-way consulting firm, not a law firm, and nothing here is legal advice.
| Official project name | Longshore Switch – Drill Hole Switch 765 kV Transmission Line Project |
| Applicant | Oncor Electric Delivery Company LLC |
| PUCT docket | No. 59029 · all filings |
| Application filed | December 11, 2025 |
| Approved | August 28, 2026 · read the order (PDF) |
| Approved route | Route 476 |
| Length | 181.6 miles |
| From | Longshore Switch, about 4.5 miles west of Forsan in Howard County |
| To | Drill Hole Switch, about 6 miles west of US 285 near the Culberson–Reeves county line |
| Voltage & structures | 765 kV single circuit on self-supporting steel lattice towers |
| Right-of-way width | 200 feet (about 24.2 acres per mile) |
| Estimated cost | $1.70 billion |
| Target in service | 2029 |
| Oncor project line | 469-822-6787 |
| Public meetings held | May 19, 2025 — Big Spring — Ryan Hall May 20, 2025 — Odessa — Lawndale Community Center May 21, 2025 — Kermit — Kermit Civic Center |
Also searched as: Oncor 765 kV Permian Basin, Longshore to Drill Hole power line, 765 kV Reeves County, Odessa transmission line right of way.
A one-page map of the approved centerline with the mileage in each county, drawn from Oncor’s own published route data. Print it, take it to your appraisal district, or send it to whoever is advising you.
Download the route map (Route 476)
This is the western half of Oncor’s 424-mile 765 kV build. The other half is Dinosaur–Longshore — Docket 59315, running to Glen Rose. Howard County is crossed by both.
Enter an address to see roughly how far it sits from the approved centerline. You can also open the interactive map, which shows the approved route in gold and the alternative routes that were studied and not selected — useful if you were notified during the docket but are no longer on the chosen route.
Tell us about your property. A senior consultant reads every one of these and calls you within the hour, 8am–6pm Central, Monday to Friday. Outside those hours, first thing the next morning.
Your case is in review. A senior consultant reads everything you shared and calls you within the hour, 8am–6pm Central, Monday to Friday. Outside those hours, first thing the next morning.
In the meantime, don't sign anything and don't feel pressured to respond to their representatives.
The approved centerline crosses 8 Texas counties. If your county is on this list and your property sits anywhere near the corridor, expect contact from a land agent.
Measured against Oncor's own published tract mapping, the approved centerline crosses more than 200 individual land tracts. Every one of those is a separate negotiation, and no two are worth the same.
The same 200-foot easement is worth very different amounts depending on where on this route it lands. This is what changes, county by county, and what tends to drive the number in each one.
Find your county below and tap it to open.
The line begins here at Longshore Switch, about four and a half miles west of Forsan, where it connects to the Dinosaur–Longshore segment. Cotton ground, oilfield surface use and refining around Big Spring. A landowner here may be facing both approved 765 kV projects at the same time, and the two files should be worked together.
Core Midland Basin. Dryland and irrigated cotton sitting on top of dense oil and gas activity, frequently under a split estate. A tower inside a center pivot is the sharpest loss on this stretch, and conflicts with existing flowlines and lease roads are close behind.
Cotton and rangeland with heavy oilfield surface use and a great deal of new drilling. Where the corridor crosses a prospective surface location or blocks an operator's access, the loss to the remainder is real and quantifiable.
The busiest surface on the route. Tracts are smaller and closer to town, which raises both the per-acre value and the severance question. Existing pipelines, power lines and roads mean the new corridor almost never lands on empty ground.
Oil and gas country with frac sand operations in the dunes. A corridor across permitted or prospective sand ground is a different loss than a corridor across grazing land, and valuing it as pasture significantly understates it.
The least populous county in the United States, and squarely in the Delaware Basin. Very large tracts, very high oilfield activity, and access questions that matter more than acreage — who uses the new road, who maintains it, and who carries the liability.
Delaware Basin drilling alongside irrigated farming around Pecos. Water, alfalfa and melon ground raise irrigation and access issues; the ranch country raises livestock water, fencing and erosion issues on thin soils.
The line ends near the Culberson–Reeves county line at Drill Hole Switch. Big desert ranches, long distances and limited existing access. Post-construction erosion, gates left in fence lines and the corridor's effect on recreational and hunting value are the items to document.
Land use notes are general guidance for owners trying to understand what drives value on their stretch of the route. They are not an appraisal and not a prediction about any particular property. Every tract is valued on its own facts.
Send us the letter, the plat, or just your county and the nearest crossroads. We will tell you where your land sits against the approved centerline — and what a first offer on this route usually leaves out.
Free review by a senior consultant →Or call or text (469) 484-7960 — a senior consultant answers owners the same day.
Texas has never had a 765-kilovolt transmission line. The state's backbone has been built at 345 kV since the 1960s. Longshore–Drill Hole is the western end of the buildout, and it exists for a reason specific to the ground it crosses: the Permian Basin is now one of the largest and fastest-growing electrical loads in North America, and the network out there was never designed for it.
Oilfield electrification is the core of it. Operators are converting drilling rigs, frac spreads, gas lift and saltwater disposal from diesel and field gas to grid power across the Midland and Delaware basins, and every conversion adds firm load in a place with very little local generation to serve it. Layer on the wind and solar that West Texas already produces in volume and the problem cuts both ways — power has to get out of the basin as well as into it. That is what this 181.6-mile line from Longshore Switch near Forsan to Drill Hole Switch near the Culberson–Reeves county line is built to do.
Oncor's published figures put one 765 kV line at the capacity of three double-circuit 345 kV lines, in a 200-foot corridor instead of roughly 480 feet. In a basin already threaded with pipelines, gathering systems, lease roads and existing transmission, that consolidation argument carried real weight at the Commission.
It also has a consequence landowners in Howard, Martin, Andrews, Ector, Winkler, Loving, Reeves and Culberson counties feel directly. A 200-foot corridor laid across land that already carries oilfield surface use is not an empty strip — it interacts with everything already there, and that interaction is exactly where a first offer tends to fall short.
Approval of the route is the beginning of the landowner phase, not the end of it. Here is the sequence, and where your leverage sits in it.
Tap any step to see what happens.
Oncor mapped a study area, held public meetings, and developed dozens of alternative route links. Landowner comments filed at this stage genuinely moved routes.
Oncor filed for a Certificate of Convenience and Necessity. Landowners on the alternative routes received formal notice and could intervene.
The Commission selected one route from the alternatives. Route selection is now settled. What is not settled is what each landowner gets paid.
A land agent asks to enter and survey. The form they hand you is a legal document. You can negotiate its terms — scope, notice, timing, repair of damage, gates left as found — and you are not required to sign it on the spot. Signing a broad permission form gives away more than most people realize, and it costs you nothing to have it read first.
An appraiser hired by the utility values your property. This appraisal is the foundation of the offer. You are entitled to your own — and an independent appraisal that documents damages to the remainder is the single most effective tool for moving an offer.
Texas law requires the condemning entity to deliver a written offer and the Texas Landowner's Bill of Rights before it can proceed to condemnation. Read both. The offer will come with a response window — commonly 30 days — but a deadline in a letter is a negotiating posture, not a statute of limitations on your property.
If negotiation fails, the utility files a condemnation petition and a judge appoints three special commissioners — local landowners — who hold a hearing and set an award. Both sides present evidence. Documented damages win here.
Either side may object to the commissioners' award and take the case to court for a jury determination of just compensation.
An easement is not a sale. You keep title, you keep paying taxes on it, and in most cases you keep grazing or farming it. What you give up is control of a strip — permanently. On this route that strip crosses land that is almost never empty: the Longshore–Drill Hole corridor runs the length of the Permian Basin, and most of what it crosses already carries oilfield surface use, irrigation, or both.
Oncor's published specification for its 765 kV lines is a 200-foot right-of-way. That is roughly 24.2 acres of permanent easement for every mile of line. Across the 181.6-mile Route 476 corridor that is roughly 4,400 acres of private land placed under permanent easement, carried on self-supporting steel lattice towers rather than wood poles.
This is the item that most separates this corridor from the rest of the buildout. Land in Howard, Martin, Andrews, Ector, Winkler, Loving, Reeves and Culberson counties frequently carries tank batteries, gathering lines, saltwater disposal lines and injection wells, caliche pits, lease roads, flowlines and existing electric distribution — often under a split estate, where the surface owner does not own the minerals and cannot simply say no to any of it.
Drop a 200-foot transmission corridor across that and real conflicts appear. Where do the transmission structures sit relative to existing wellheads and flowlines? Does the corridor block a lease road or a future drilling location? Does the access road Oncor builds cross the same ground an operator already uses, and who maintains it? Does the easement language give the utility rights that collide with obligations you already owe under an oil and gas lease or a surface use agreement? These are compensable and negotiable issues, and a standard per-acre offer does not touch them.
Through the eastern half of the route the corridor crosses cotton ground around Stanton, Big Spring and Andrews, some of it dryland and some under center pivot. A pivot is the sharpest example of a small taking with a large loss: a lattice tower placed inside a pivot circle can take a wedge of that circle out of production permanently, and in some layouts it compromises the whole system. The compensable loss there is not 24 acres of dirt — it is the productive capacity of the circle and the cost of reconfiguring irrigation around a fixed obstruction.
Around Odessa and Kermit the surface is as busy as it gets in Texas, and tracts are smaller and closer to town, which raises the value of the acreage and the severance question at the same time. Winkler County adds frac sand operations to the picture, where a corridor across a permitted or prospective sand area is a very different loss than a corridor across grazing land, and needs to be valued as what it actually is.
At the western end the tracts become large desert ranches in the Delaware Basin, along with irrigated ground around Pecos. On a section-scale ranch the easement acreage may look trivial against the whole, and that is precisely the argument a first offer will lean on. The items that matter there are different: permanent access roads across country that had none, gates and cattle guards left in fence lines, livestock water and stock tank disruption, brush and erosion after construction, and what the corridor does to the ranch's value as a hunting or recreational property.
On this route the largest compensable item is rarely the easement acreage. It is the interaction — what the corridor does to the operations, the irrigation, the access and the future use of everything you keep, plus the cost to cure what the taking breaks. An offer built on a per-acre rate for the strip has skipped the categories that usually carry the most value on Permian land.
A senior consultant will walk your numbers with you — the easement acreage, what it does to the remainder, and the value the first offer tends to leave on the table. No cost and no obligation.
Free review by a senior consultant →Or call or text (469) 484-7960 — a senior consultant answers owners the same day.
When the offer arrives it will not say "here is our opening bid." It will arrive as a package: a cover letter, an appraisal or a summary of one, a plat showing the part being acquired, an easement document already drafted, and in most cases a deadline. It is designed to look final. It is not final.
Every legitimate offer breaks down into the same three components. Find them, because the way they are weighted tells you where the offer is weak.
| Component | What it pays for | Typically |
|---|---|---|
| Value of the part acquired | The strip itself, priced per acre against comparable sales | Largest single line |
| Damages to the remainder | Lost value to everything you keep — severance, access, layout, view, marketability | Frequently understated |
| Cost to cure | What it costs to fix what the taking broke — fences, gates, water lines, crossings, re-routed roads | Frequently omitted |
How much does the back half matter? In one recent Texas offer package our team reviewed, damages to the remainder made up about 39% of the total offer and cost to cure another 29% — nearly seven of every ten dollars came from something other than the raw land price. That package was a highway acquisition rather than a transmission easement, so the specifics differ. The structure does not. If your offer is almost entirely a per-acre land number with little or nothing for damages and cure, that is not because your property has none. It is because nobody quantified them.
The utility’s appraiser works for the utility. That does not make them dishonest — it makes them narrow. These are the categories that routinely go unquantified on the Longshore–Drill Hole corridor.
Tap each one to see what it means on your tract.
A 200-foot high-voltage corridor can reduce the market value of your whole tract, not just the strip. Buyers of Permian surface price a transmission corridor in.
Where the corridor crosses tank batteries, flowlines, disposal lines or lease roads, the interference has a cost — and it belongs in the number rather than being absorbed by the surface owner.
A permanent corridor across ground that had a future well pad, a pit or a facility site on it takes that option away. That is a loss to the remainder.
A tower inside a pivot circle near Stanton or Andrews can take a wedge out of production permanently and force the whole system to be reconfigured.
Corridors across permitted or prospective caliche and frac sand areas in Winkler and Ector counties are not grazing land, and should not be valued as if they were.
New permanent roads across a section-scale ranch in Loving, Reeves or Culberson County change how the place operates. Who maintains them, and who is liable, is negotiable.
Stock tanks, water lines, cross-fencing and post-construction erosion on thin desert soils are cost-to-cure items with documentable numbers.
The extra working room during construction has its own rental value, for the term they will actually occupy it — which is usually longer than the first draft says.
Send it over with their appraisal if they gave you one — a photo of the pages is enough. A senior consultant reads it and tells you what their number left out, what we would argue for, and whether it can be moved.
Free review by a senior consultant →Or call or text (469) 484-7960 — a senior consultant answers owners the same day.
We are on the owner's side of the right-of-way. We are paid out of the increase, which means we do not get paid unless you do better.
Send us whatever they sent you — a survey permission form, a letter, an appraisal, an offer. We read it and tell you plainly where it is weak. No charge, no obligation.
We bring in independent, certified appraisers to value the part acquired and, critically, to document damages to the remainder and cost to cure.
We deal with the land agents and their appraisers directly, with documentation behind every number, so you are not negotiating alone against people who do this full time.
Our fee is a percentage of the increase above the original offer. If we do not improve it, you owe us nothing.
Tap any question to see the answer.
The Public Utility Commission of Texas approved Route 476 for this project on August 28, 2026, in Docket No. 59029. The corridor is settled. The exact centerline can still shift somewhat within the approved corridor when Oncor completes final survey and engineering, so a property near the edge of the corridor should confirm its status directly.
Oncor specifies a 200-foot right-of-way for its 765 kV lines. That works out to about 24.2 acres for every mile of line. Across the full 181.6-mile route that is roughly 4,402 acres of private land placed under permanent easement.
A land agent will ask you to sign a survey permission form. That form is a negotiable legal document — its scope, notice requirements, what happens to gates and fences, and who pays for damage are all terms you can change. You are not required to sign it the day it is handed to you, and refusing to sign immediately does not forfeit any right. Have it reviewed first.
No. A written offer is an opening position. Under Texas law a condemning entity must make a bona fide offer and deliver the Texas Landowner's Bill of Rights before it can condemn, and you are entitled to just compensation — which includes the value of the part taken plus damages to the remainder of your property. Most offers can be negotiated. The response deadline in the letter is the utility's schedule, not a legal cutoff on your rights.
Ultimately, yes. A utility holding a certificate from the PUCT has the power of eminent domain, so the question is almost never whether the line gets built — it is how much you are paid and on what terms. That is exactly why the negotiation matters, and why what goes into the easement document matters as much as the dollar figure.
It depends on the part acquired, what the corridor does to the rest of your property, and what it costs to fix what the taking breaks. Two neighbors with identical acreage can be owed very different amounts because one loses a pivot circle and a field road and the other loses a strip of pasture along a fence line. Anyone who quotes you a per-acre rate without seeing your property is guessing.
There is no single deadline, but the practical answer is that your leverage is highest before you sign anything and drops sharply afterward. Survey permission, the appraisal, and the written offer all happen over a period of months. Once an easement is executed it runs with the land permanently and is extremely difficult to modify.
No. National ROW is a right-of-way and condemnation consulting firm, and we represent property owners only — never the utility. We do not provide legal advice and no attorney-client relationship is created by contacting us. Much of what this process requires is valuation and negotiation work. When a case needs a lawyer, we say so and coordinate with condemnation counsel.
The review is free. If you engage us, we work on contingency — our fee is a percentage of the increase we secure above the original offer. If we do not improve your offer, you owe us nothing.
Everything is public. The complete docket, including Oncor's application, the routing study, landowner protests and the final order, is on the PUCT Interchange under Control Number 59029. We link to it directly in the sources at the bottom of this page, and we encourage you to read it.
Not your rights against the transmission easement — you are still the surface owner being asked to grant it, and you are still owed just compensation. What a split estate changes is the complexity. The corridor has to coexist with whatever the mineral owner and operator are already entitled to do on that surface, and the terms of the transmission easement should be written with those existing obligations in view rather than in ignorance of them.
The interference is a real issue and it is negotiable. Where the structures land relative to existing wellheads, flowlines and disposal lines, whether the corridor blocks a lease road or a future surface location, and who maintains and is liable for the access road Oncor builds are all items that can be addressed in the easement terms and reflected in the number. A standard per-acre offer does not touch any of it.
Not as 24 acres of dirt. A structure inside a pivot circle near Stanton, Andrews or Big Spring can take a wedge out of production permanently and in some layouts compromises the whole system. The correct measure is the lost productive capacity of the circle plus the cost of reconfiguring irrigation around a fixed obstruction that is never moving.
Yes, and this is a common gap in offers through Winkler and Ector counties. Ground with permitted or prospective caliche or sand value is not grazing land, and valuing it at a rangeland rate materially understates the loss. That value has to be established with evidence, but where the evidence exists it belongs in the claim.
Eight: Howard, Martin, Andrews, Ector, Winkler, Loving, Reeves and Culberson. The approved centerline crosses more than 200 individual land tracts across those counties, and each one is a separate negotiation.
That framing is exactly the argument a first offer relies on, and on a section-scale ranch in Loving, Reeves or Culberson County it is usually the wrong one. The items that matter are not the percentage of acreage: they are the permanent access road across country that had none, the gates left in your fence lines, livestock water and stock tank disruption, erosion on thin soil after construction, and the effect on the ranch's value as a recreational property.
Survey permission form, letter, appraisal, easement draft, offer — whatever stage you are at, we will read it and tell you where it is weak. Free, and there is no obligation to go further.
Free review by a senior consultant →Or call or text (469) 484-7960 — we answer owners the same day.
County lists and tract counts on this page were derived by measuring Oncor's own published approved-route geometry against public county boundaries and Oncor's public tract layer. They are close, not surveyed. Verify your specific parcel against the official filings before relying on anything here.
