Oil: Production data for April show how fracking has shattered not only the shale rock in formations like Texas' Eagle Ford and Permian Basin but also the myths of "peak oil" and petroleum as an energy source of the past.
As Mark Perry notes on his Carpe Diem blog, Texas produced an average of 2.45 million barrels a day (bpd) of crude oil in April, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA). That's the highest average daily output for Texas in any month since April 1985 — 28 years ago.
In only 2-1/2 years, the Lone Star State has doubled its crude output, making it what Perry dubs Saudi Texas and reversing a 23-year decline that fueled speculation that the maximum rate of petroleum extraction has been, or will soon be, reached.
As of February, the most recent month for which international oil production data are available, Texas would be the 12th largest oil producer in the world if it were a separate country, only slightly behind Kuwait and Venezuela. This is due to an oil boom that's added the equivalent of the Bakken formation in North Dakota to the state's output in just the past 16 months.
At the current pace of output gains, Texas' production will likely surpass 3 million bpd by year-end, pulling it ahead of Venezuela, Kuwait, Mexico and Iraq to become the equivalent of the ninth largest oil-production "nation" in the world.
The Eagle Ford shale formation, a 400-mile-long, 50-mile-wide, crescent-shaped field in the south central part of the state, is still brimming with crude. Its production in March rose 77% from a year earlier to 529,900 bpd, the Texas Railroad Commission reported.
This of course has contributed to a job boom, just as in North Dakota. Over the 12 months ended in May, Texas payrolls swelled by 325,000 positions, equivalent to a 3% annual increase. Every business day over the past year, almost 1,500 new jobs were created in the Lone Star State.
A report by the University of Texas, San Antonio, showed that in 2011 alone Eagle Ford supported 38,000 full-time jobs, generated $10.8 billion in gross regional product and poured millions into state and local tax coffers.
The shale oil and gas boom unleashed by fracking — short for hydraulic fracturing — has saved the Obama economy from complete collapse.
"Abundant low-cost energy is stimulating a revival of manufacturing in the U.S. as well as increased American economic competitiveness," countering what otherwise is "a time of stubbornly high unemployment," notes energy expert Daniel Yergin.