After an abandoned well began spewing toxic, salty water onto her Permian Basin land, Ashley Watt would stop at nothing to determine the cause—and to hold Chevron accountable.
That is, whenever the industry can sort out supply-chain issues and labor shortages.
Former staff writer Nicholas Lemann remembers how Exxon refused to cooperate with his story—and why that made all the difference.
A Pecos County well has leaked noxious salt water for almost two decades. No one is taking responsibility for getting it cleaned up.
Oil-field medics face long hours, grisly accidents, desolation, and low pay. So why do they do it?
Decades after the Wichita County town saved its stadium from an oilman’s plan to drill at midfield, the structure has been condemned—after pipes once donated by oil companies rusted out.
The new president’s energy-related executive actions have stirred opposition in Texas and other oil-producing states. But Biden’s moves are dwarfed by the larger forces that have battered, and will transform, the industry.
As CEO of Occidental Petroleum, Vicki Hollub made the biggest deal the oil business had seen in years. Will it also go down as the biggest failure?
As other major oil companies have invested in renewable energy, the Irving-based producer has stubbornly stayed the course.
Terence O'Rourke has spent a decade warning officials that a storm making landfall directly in Galveston Bay could be much worse than even Harvey.
With a virus-infected economy and an oil bust to boot, the Texas model is facing an unprecedented crisis.
Producers, who failed to anticipate how quickly storage would fill up this month, are now scrambling to turn off the taps—at least those who can.
Get those $400 fajitas while you can, because Houston's boom is over.
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.
A 10-part podcast series from Texas Monthly and Imperative Entertainment.
Our new 11-part series takes you inside the rugged Permian Basin of West Texas, where roughnecks and billionaire wildcatters are fueling a boom so big it’s reshaping our climate, our economy, and our geopolitics.
In his plainspoken, hilariously vivid vernacular, the Texas oilman constantly spun tales about good times and bad.
Though some will reap serious profits, the region’s dealing with skyrocketing rents, overcrowded schools, and potholes as big as VW Beetles.
The state’s biggest industry finds itself in an unusual position: facing landowner-friendly reforms at the Texas Legislature.
The film debuts at the Dallas International Film Festival this weekend.
A recent spate of closures of the iconic restaurant chain has left many communities in the lurch.
The energy secretary outlined the Trump administration’s new direction at an oil and gas conference in Houston.
The number of spills in 2016 was the lowest Texas had seen since 2012.
Marfa Public Radio reports on the down side of the boom.
Start your summer vacations early, if you can.
Don’t be fooled by claims of economic diversification—the city still runs on oil.
Let’s not overreact, but let’s not underreact either.
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.
Texas is much less vulnerable to an oil bust than it once was, or than one might think.
Denton's fracking ban is facing constitutional challenges, but other parts of the state are keen to enforce laws of their own against fracking.
A son of the oil patch chases the new boom in South Texas.
Can Texas’s oil and natural gas boom keep going forever?
Residents in the more upscale half of the Permian Basin make more money per capita than people in New York, San Francisco, Dallas, and Houston.
Taxpayers, who footed a large chunk of the bill for the new $1.2 billion Cowboys Stadium, got a raw deal, according to a new story in Bloomberg Businessweek.
The new $8 billion project will be fed in part with natural gas from the South Texas and Eagle Ford Shale fields.
Is TNT's reboot of the classic soap opera also a mirror of the country's changing relationship with fossil fuels?
The powerful state agency is tasked with regulating oil, gas and other energy—not trains. Its own commissioners favor a new name: the Texas Energy Resources Commission.
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott scored a victory over the EPA this week over when a federal appeals court ordered the federal agency to take more time to consider Texas's pollution control measures.
Apple nearly nudges Exxon out of the top spot for most valuable company, JC Penney unveils a new logo, and H-E-B tries to buy its .xxx domain name.
What lies beneath the hood of ExxonMobil, the world’s largest oil company?
The author of Private Empire: ExxonMobile and American Power answers the question: In terms of difficulty, how would you compare reporting on Exxon with the reporting you did for your previous book, The Bin Ladens?
In 1996 a powerful South Texas ranching clan accused ExxonMobil of sabotaging wells on the family’s property. Thirteen years, millions of dollars in legal fees, and one state Supreme Court opinion later, the biggest oil field feud of its time is still raging.
The New Yorker writer talks about his latest book, Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power.
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.
The spill in the Gulf is just the latest in a string of catastrophic regulatory failures that prove how incompetent government is. And how important it is.
The BP oil spill hit the small world of Houston’s oil and gas business hard. So now that the well is plugged, who’s up and who’s down?
Skip Hollandsworth talks about rigs, the trickle-down effect, and the new generation of oilmen.
Oil patch old-timers said to stay away from the Austin chalk. But a few feisty newcomers refused to listen and cashed in for millions.
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.
Thirty years ago, people couldnt believe it: The old man’s elixir boosted crops, ate up sewage, and made the desert bloom. Today half a dozen Texas companies claim the elixir does all that and a whole lot more.
