According to the Texas Independent Producers and Royalty Owners Association’s (TIPRO) 2019 State of Energy Report, Texas set a new all-time record in 2018 for most barrels of oil drilled in a calendar year. The Lone Star State produced 1.54 billion barrels in 2018, shattering the old record of 1.28 billion barrels set in 1973.
Forbes reports:
How big is that total production number? Per TIPRO, the second largest oil producing state, North Dakota, came in with 443 million barrels of total oil production for the year, about 29% of the total produced in Texas. Given that, according to the Texas Railroad Commission’s official data, Texas crude production for 2017 came in at 1.027 billion barrels, that means that oil producers in Texas basically increased the state’s oil production by more than the equivalent of North Dakota’s in a single 12-month period.
As Forbes notes, Texas is by far the nation’s leading producer of oil. Last July, CNN reported that in 2019 Texas would likely surpass Iran and Iraq and thereby single-handedly produce more oil than any other single country in the world besides Russia and Saudi Arabia:
Plunging drilling costs have sparked an explosion of production out of the Permian Basin of West Texas. In fact, Texas is pumping so much oil that it will surpass OPEC members Iran and Iraq next year, HSBC predicted in a recent report.
If it were a country, Texas would be the world’s No. 3 oil producer, behind only Russia and Saudi Arabia, the investment bank said.
“It’s remarkable. The Permian is nothing less than a blessing for the global economy,” said Bob McNally, president of Rapidan Energy Group, a consulting firm.
Far-Left Democrats in Washington, D.C. may be pushing the vehemently anti-fossil fuel “Green New Deal,” but, says Forbes, “Texas is in the midst of the single largest oil boom its economy has ever seen.” Also of economic importance for political partisans of all stripes: According to TIPRO’s State of Energy Report, the national U.S. oil and gas industry, overall, paid a national annual wage averaging $112,712 last year — more than double the average across other private industrial sectors.
As the Houston Chronicle reports, Texas Gov. Greg Abott lauded the eye-popping numbers from TIPRO:
As the national leader in oil and natural gas production, Texas is paving the way for America’s energy independence. From technological advancements resulting in increased oil and natural gas output to our [liquefied natural gas] export facilities, the Lone Star State’s energy economy is firing on all cylinders. As Governor, I will continue to work with our independent oil and gas producers to take our economy to even greater heights.
In terms of employment figures, TIPRO reported that the national U.S. oil and gas industry, overall, finished the year 2018 employing 880,681 people. Texas single-handedly accounted for more than 352,000 of those jobs, or about 40% of the national total. Furthermore, the 27,000 new oil and gas industry jobs that Texas added in 2018 were more than five times as many jobs as were produced by the second place state: Oklahoma was a distant second with 5,266 new oil and gas industry jobs created.