Following up on last week’s piece detailing the reasons why the Shale oil and natural gas boom has taken place in Texas, but not in other states like California and New York, we’ve seen quite a bit of interesting, related news pieces over the last several days.
On Monday, the Wall Street Journal published a very informative op/ed in its Review & Outlook section, titled “A Tale of Two Oil States”, which made more detailed comparisons between the economic performance between Texas and California, and the ways in which each state’s policy decisions related to shale development have affected that performance. Here is a key passage:
The two richest fields are the Eagle Ford shale formation in South Texas, where production is up 50% in the last year alone, and the 250-square mile Permian Basin. Midland-Odessa in the Permian is one of America’s fastest-growing metro areas.
More than 400,000 Texans are employed by the oil and gas industry (almost 10 times more than in California) and (Texas Railroad Commission Chairman Barry) Smitherman says the average salary is $100,000 a year. The industry generates about $80 billion a year in economic activity, which exceeds the annual output of all goods and services in 13 individual states.....
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
