The Colossus of Texas Booms 8. Survival and Growth 9. As the new millennium begins, it is worth looking back over the twentieth century and considering how oil changed Texas. The notion is near inconceivable. One might as easily image Los Angeles without freeways, Manhattan without skyscrapers, or Washington, D.C., without politics.
Oil is central to the economic and social identity of modern Texas.
Within a half-century of the industry's birth in Texas, the state's vast petroleum reserves dwarfed those of most other producing states. In 1932, the giant East Texas field alone yielded more than the total annual production of most of the other states. Fettered by regulation, in 1940 Texas still produced twice as much oil as California, the next largest producing state and one where production was unlimited. Producing over one-third of the nation's oil in 1940, Texas dominated the price of crude oil in national and international markets. Thus, once the Texas Railroad Commission became the industry's regulatory agency, it assumed the dominant position in crude oil markets.