DALLAS — Last year, Texas produced 43% of the all the oil pulled out of the ground in the U.S. - 1,776,449,000 barrels came from Texas.
And this year we are seeing an upswing. The number of rigs drilling for oil here has steadily gone back up in 2021, after plummeting to new lows last year during the pandemic.
And the tax money from oil production is gushing into state coffers. Just in September and October, the state took in $801,617 in oil production taxes.
That’s up 87.46% from the same time frame last year.
And from oil we get to gas. Everybody has been talking about gas prices.
They have had quite a run-up this year. In Texas, the per-gallon price has gone from about $1.895 in January to $3.017 recently. But that has ticked down in recent days to $2.969 per gallon.
AAA lists Texas as having the lowest average price at the pump in the country. Of course, that fluctuates depending on where you live in the state.
Just for perspective, a gallon of gas recently was going for a little less than a gallon of milk at Kroger, and much less than a venti Starbucks salted cream cold brew (a gallon of that might run you around $26).
Still, the increased cost of fuel is a burden for consumers. We’ll see if 2021 is the year when Texans tire of paying for gas and go hybrid or all electric. As of last year, Texas was third in the country — just behind Florida and way behind California — in transitioning to electric vehicles.
That, and the fact that Texas is such a populated, large and spread out state, might account for why we also consume more gasoline than any other state in the country — on average this year, about 38,162,000 gallons per day.
The sale of all that gasoline also benefits the state of Texas, which collects hundreds of thousands of dollars in gasoline taxes each month.