Texas continues trend of becoming more efficient at producing oil and gas

Fuel Fix:

Both Texas and the nation are producing more oil than nearly ever, but they're doing so with far fewer workers and drilling rigs.

Texas is producing more oil now than at any point in 2014 when oil was last priced above $100 a barrel, and the industry is doing so with more than 25 percent fewer people and almost half the rigs, according to the Texas Petro Index calculated by economist Karr Ingham.

Today's rigs are more automated and each of them are able to drill more wells from single locations, as well as produce more oil per well by drilling longer horizontal laterals and using hydraulic fracturing, called fracking, to unlock the petroleum from shale rocks.

"The implications are striking: record crude oil and natural gas production at significantly lower prices, rig counts, and number of industry workers," Ingham said. "It means that fewer employees are needed to produce more crude oil in Texas and the U.S. than has ever been produced."
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Texas is producing more oil and gas with fewer people than it did when the market was at its peak four years ago.  This is a by-product of how the shale drillers were able to survive the OPEC predatory pricing attacks which drove down teh price of oil.