This prodigious production now puts Texas in the list of top 10 oil producers in the world, just slightly behind Kuwait. There are 1,000 new jobs being created in Texas every day, and at the current rate of increase, Texas’ production of crude oil is expected to exceed three million barrels per day early next year, and four million less than a year later.
The virtual explosion in Texas’ production of natural gas and oil, thanks to fracking, caught even Citigroup off-guard. In February it apologized for so widely missing the mark in its report the previous year entitled “Energy 2020: Independence Day”:
Momentum toward North American energy independence accelerated last year [2012] well beyond the wildest dreams of any analyst and well above the forecast we made in our first [report] entitled “Energy 2020: North America, the New Middle East?”…
So far, the results have been stunning.… In the decade through last year … natural gas use … grew by a phenomenal 47%, ending coals’ century-long domination….
Starting this year, North American output should start to have a tangible effect both on global prices and trading patterns and will eventually turn the global geopolitics of energy on its head.
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