After a recovery year for the state’s oil and gas industry, 2018 promises to be record-breaking.
That’s according to Karr Ingham, economist with the Texas Alliance of Energy Producers. He created the Texas Petro Index, which measures the state of the oil economy based on different factors, such as employment, rig count and the price of oil.
In December 2017, most indicators were up from a year ago, and Ingham expects oil production to surpass the previous record year of 1972, when Texas producers extracted 1.263 billion barrels of oil.
“I don’t see how we don’t break this record in 2018,” Ingham said on Tuesday.
And this with about half as many oil rigs in operation as in November 2014, shortly before the price of oil tanked – but also with a smaller workforce.
After two years of layoffs, many oil jobs have come back, but Ingham doesn’t expect all of them to return anytime soon.
Listen
Great turnout today in Houston for our #Petro index update with Karr Ingham.#txlege #oil#natgas pic.twitter.com/tF3R831PD9
— Texas Alliance (@TexasAllianceEP) January 23, 2018