In a rugged corner of West Texas, billionaire wildcatters and roughnecks are fueling an oil boom so big it’s reshaping our climate, our economy, and our geopolitics.
Boomtown is an eleven-part podcast series from Texas Monthly and Imperative Entertainment, with new episodes publishing every Tuesday starting December 10, 2019. Find the latest episode here, or dive deep into the Texas Monthly archives to read more about the Permian Basin and the Texas oil industry.
Record-breaking oil production in the Permian Basin has brought the boom to the Big Bend’s doorstep for the first time. Is it too late to save this pristine landscape?
No oil and gas baron since John D. Rockefeller has made more of an impact on society than George P. Mitchell. But this son of poor Greek immigrants who died a billionaire wanted to leave a legacy beyond oil and gas.
Christian talks with renowned business writer Bethany McLean about how the finances of fracking aren't what they're cracked up to be.
The uneasy alliance between ranchers and the oil industry goes all the way back to the early wildcatting days in West Texas. But today, that relationship is more fraught than ever.
The Permian Basin is the birthplace of Friday Night Lights. But the historic oil boom threatens beloved high school football traditions.
During booms, the Permian Basin sees a rise in prostitution charges. But misperceptions and stereotypes about sex work have led to policies that may actually harm the women involved.
We explore a different kind of boom in the Permian Basin. Meet the women working at a lingerie coffee shop, a “breastaurant,” and two area strip clubs.
Working in the oil patch is incredibly dangerous. But March 10, 2015, brought unimaginable tragedy for one Andrews family.
A devastating bust transforms the Permian from the promised land into a wasteland.
The Santa Rita oil well, named after the patron saint of impossible dreams, launched the first Permian Basin boom and has been fueling the dreams of West Texas wildcatters ever since.
In the first episode of our new podcast series, host Christian Wallace takes us back to his hometown in the Permian Basin, which is nearly unrecognizable to him today. We meet a few of the people whose lives have been upended by the biggest oil boom in U.S. history.
When his Houston-based company was on the ropes, George Mitchell pushed his engineers to resuscitate a declining North Texas gas field. The solution they came up with transformed the world.
Can a 1960s novel with a cult following finally become the blockbuster film its fans believe it should be?
Growing up in the Permian Basin, I thought I had a sense of what it was like working the oilfields. Turns out I didn’t know a damn thing.
Our most iconic oil and gas man, lately a water marauder and now a celebrated windcatter, has saved himself a couple of times in his eighty glorious years. Who’s to say he can’t save America?
A son of the oil patch chases the new boom in South Texas.
Forget the Outer Continental Shelf. There’s a good old-fashioned boom happening in Midland, thanks to a crafty drilling technique that unlocked the secret reserves of the Permian Basin and revived the late, great West Texas oilman.
Though some will reap serious profits, the region’s dealing with skyrocketing rents, overcrowded schools, and potholes as big as VW Beetles.
Plummeting prices. Industry layoffs. Panicked mergers. Are we about to experience the eighties all over again?
Midland’s energy companies are still laying people off a decade after the bottom of the bust. But—surprise—the city’s economy is booming again.
(And get rich doing it.)
How a wisecracking 95-year-old chemist plans to reenergize the future.
On this week’s National Podcast of Texas, the author of ’Superpower’ outlines the state’s pioneering role in America’s transition toward fossil fuels alternatives.
The unlikely story of how a handful of dreamers, schemers, and (all too often) failures made oil-and-gas-rich Texas the leading wind power state in the country.
Offshore drillers are finding mammoth reservoirs in places that were once considered barren, which is why the Gulf of Mexico is booming again.
