Over at AEI, Mark Perry highlights new state crude oil production data just released by the EIA showing that Texas’ oil boom continues to grow. According to the report:
As recently as mid-2009, Texas was producing less than 20% of America’s domestic crude oil. The recent gusher of unconventional oil being produced in the Eagle Ford Shale and Permian Basin oil fields of Texas, thanks to breakthrough drilling and extraction technologies, has recently pushed the Lone Star State’s share of domestic crude oil all the way up to more than 36% of America’s crude output for the last three months.
5. Oil output has increased so significantly in Texas in recent years that if the state were considered as a separate oil-producing country, Texas would have been the 8th largest oil-producing nation in the world for crude oil output in June (most recent month available for international oil production data) at 3.07 million bpd – just behind No. 7 Iraq’s production of 3.22 million bpd.
It’s become common to refer to an area blessed with some abundant energy sources as “the Saudi Arabia of __.” America is “the Saudi Arabia of coal.” California is “the Saudi Arabia of solar.” New Zealand is “the Saudi Arabia of milk” (yes, really). Perry indulges in this trope, referring to the oil boom as creating a “Saudi Texas.” But now that a Texas-led America has passed Saudi Arabia in oil production, it may be time for a change. The next time someone wants to explain just how much of some resource a country has, they may need to talk about it being “the Texas of ___.”