The West Texas Energy Consortium (“Consortium” or WTxEC) is an open forum for coordination and information sharing, organized by the Workforce Solutions Boards in Concho Valley, West Central Texas, and Permian Basin Regions. The WTxEC has contracted with the Center for Community and Business Research at The University of Texas at San Antonio’s Institute for Economic Development to estimate the economic impacts of the oil and gas industry on certain counties in the Consortium in the year 2012, and to create a forecast for the year 2022.

After a drop in production in the early half of the 2000s, the annual oil production in the United States has dramatically increased, from 3.1 billion barrels in 2008 to 4.1 billion barrels in 2012, ranking it second in the world in oil production behind only Saudi Arabia (4.2 billion barrels). The surge in U.S. domestic oil production is a factor in the recent decrease of the U.S. trade deficit.

Within the United States, the state of Texas has emerged as a leader in domestic oil production. Texas is the home to 858 active rigs, more rigs than any other state in the country. Texas’s rig count represents nearly 25 percent of rigs worldwide.* Texas has access to the Barnett, Eagle Ford, Granite Wash, Haynesville, Mississippian, and Permian basins: six of the 14 major petroleum basins in the United States.* The Energy Information Administration in March 2014 recently conducted a study that focuses on the six shale basins that account for 90 percent of the growth in oil and natural gas production in the United States.* Half of these key oil and shale gas regions are located
within the state of Texas.

* - Please reference report for footnotes.