Download or read book Boom or Bust written by Sheena B. Stief and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2021-04-01 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A vast number of studies have documented the economic and geological effects of oil production, but the impact of boom-and-bust cycles on individuals and communities has received less attention. Boom or Bust remedies this gap by highlighting the personal experiences of those directly affected in an economy dominated by oil and natural gas production. The Permian Basin is one of the largest oil-producing regions in the United States. People who live there have benefited from explosive growth, only to see opportunities vanish with sudden industry downturns. In 2016, the National Endowment for the Humanities funded a grant for the study and collection of energy narratives in this economically volatile region. Boom or Bust derives from that community initiative and offers a unique contribution to the developing field of energy humanities. The oil-field industry may seem to be all about numbers, but as Boom or Bust demonstrates, residents of oil-and-gas country, whether they work in the oil field or not, are at the mercy of an ever-shifting economy. When the price of oil rises, companies move in and newcomers flood the area, expanding the employment force. And as the population booms, so does the infrastructure of cities. When prices drop, though, families must make difficult choices: whether to stay put or follow the oil to another location. With the ensuing declines in population, small businesses close their doors and unemployment levels rise. Despite the inevitable declines and despite the increase in alternative energy resources, many West Texans feel a sense of pride that borders on patriotism. Boom or Bust reveals the full complexity of boomtown culture.

Download or read book Oil in Texas written by Diana Davids Hinton and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2002-03-15 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The dramatic story of the oil boom that transformed the history of a state, drawn from archives and first-person accounts. As the twentieth century began, oil in Texas was easy to find, but the quantities were too small to attract industrial capital and production. Then, on January 10, 1901, the Spindletop gusher blew in. Over the next fifty years, oil transformed Texas, creating a booming economy that built cities, attracted out-of-state workers and companies, funded schools and universities, and generated wealth that raised the overall standard of living, even for blue-collar workers. No other twentieth-century development had a more profound effect upon the state. This book chronicles the explosive growth of the Texas oil industry from the first commercial production at Corsicana in the 1890s through the vital role of Texas oil in World War II. Using both archival records and oral histories, they follow the wildcatters and the gushers as the oil industry spread into almost every region of the state. The authors trace the development of many branches of the petroleum industry: pipelines, refining, petrochemicals, and natural gas. They also explore how overproduction and volatile prices led to increasing regulation and gave broad regulatory powers to the Texas Railroad Commission.

Download or read book Texas Oil and Gas written by Jeff A. Spencer and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2013-09-16 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Texas Oil and Gas documents in postcards the rapid growth of the Texas petroleum industry from its beginnings near Corsicana in the 1890s through the next several decades of oil booms throughout the state. The young 20th century opened with the Lucas Gusher at Spindletop in 1901. Thousands rushed from the oilfields of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia to find work and riches. Continued drilling success along the Texas Gulf Coast transformed Houston into a major city and the Beaumont area into a major petrochemical center. Through the 1910s and 1920s, oil booms occurred in North Texas, the Panhandle, Central Texas, and West Texas. The giant East Texas oilfield, the second largest North American oilfield to Alaskas North Slope, was discovered in 1930. Texas oil replaced coal as fuel for the nations railroads and provided fuel for our military in two world wars.

Download or read book Texas Almanac 2000 2001 Millennium Edition written by and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Texon written by Jane Spraggins Wilson and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2011-05-23 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From 1924 to 1962, Texon was a model company oil town in Reagan County, Texas. Pittsburgh-based Big Lake Oil Company developed the town site next to the Big Lake Oil Field and Santa Rita No. 1, the discovery well on University of Texas lands in the Permian Basin. Pres. Levi Smith ensured that company employees and their families enjoyed comfortable housing and community amenities, including a grade school, hospital, nondenominational church, theater, swimming pool, and baseball park, as well as a caf and dry goods, grocery, and drugstores. By the end of World War II, the Big Lake Fields declining production meant a smaller workforce and a declining Texon population. Plymouth Oil assumed ownership in 1956 and six years later sold out to Marathon Oil, which ended company support for the town. At annual reunions, however, former residentswho remember Oiler baseball, scouting, Sunday school, and Labor Day celebrationshave kept the Texon experience alive.

Download or read book The West Texas Power Plant That Saved the World written by Andy Bowman and published by . This book was released on 2023-08-08 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How one solar power plant might chart a sustainable path forward for enlisting American capitalism in the fight against climate change.

Download or read book Geologic Wonders of South Park Colorado written by Donald P. McGookey and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Describes Geology of South Park, Colorado, mountains, structures, gold, glaciation, volcanics."

Download or read book West Texas written by Paul H. Carlson and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2014-03-04 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Texas is as well known for its diversity of landscape and culture as it is for its enormity. But West Texas, despite being popularized in film and song, has largely been ignored by historians as a distinct and cultural geographic space. In West Texas: A History of the Giant Side of the State, Paul H. Carlson and Bruce A. Glasrud rectify that oversight. This volume assembles a diverse set of essays covering the grand sweep of West Texas history from the ancient to the contemporary. In four parts—comprehending the place, people, politics and economic life, and society and culture—Carlson and Glasrud and their contributors survey the confluence of life and landscape shaping the West Texas of today. Early chapters define the region. The “giant side of Texas” is a nineteenth-century geographical description of a vast area that includes the Panhandle, Llano Estacado, Permian Basin, and Big Bend–Trans-Pecos country. It is an arid, windblown environment that connects intimately with the history of Texas culture. Carlson and Glasrud take a nonlinear approach to exploring the many cultural influences on West Texas, including the Tejanos, the oil and gas economy, and the major cities. Readers can sample topics in whichever order they please, whether they are interested in learning about ranching, recreation, or turn-of-the-century education. Throughout, familiar western themes arise: the urban growth of El Paso is contrasted with the mid-century decline of small towns and the social shifting that followed. Well-known Texas scholars explore popular perceptions of West Texas as sparsely populated and rife with social contradiction and rugged individualism. West Texas comes into yet clearer view through essays on West Texas women, poets, Native peoples, and musicians. Gathered here is a long overdue consideration of the landscape, culture, and everyday lives of one of America’s most iconic and understudied regions.

Download or read book The Kings of Big Spring written by Bryan Mealer and published by . This book was released on 2018-02-06 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Texas blood is bond and oil is king.

Download or read book The Big Rich written by Bryan Burrough and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2010-03-30 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Full of schadenfreude and speculation—and solid, timely history too.” —Kirkus Reviews “This is a portrait of capitalism as white-knuckle risk taking, yielding fruitful discoveries for the fathers, but only sterile speculation for the sons—a story that resonates with today's economic upheaval.” —Publishers Weekly “What's not to enjoy about a book full of monstrous egos, unimaginable sums of money, and the punishment of greed and shortsightedness?” —The Economist Phenomenal reviews and sales greeted the hardcover publication of The Big Rich, New York Times bestselling author Bryan Burrough's spellbinding chronicle of Texas oil. Weaving together the multigenerational sagas of the industry's four wealthiest families, Burrough brings to life the men known in their day as the Big Four: Roy Cullen, H. L. Hunt, Clint Murchison, and Sid Richardson, all swaggering Texas oil tycoons who owned sprawling ranches and mingled with presidents and Hollywood stars. Seamlessly charting their collective rise and fall, The Big Rich is a hugely entertaining account that only a writer with Burrough's abilities-and Texas upbringing-could have written.

Download or read book Oilfield Trash written by Bobby D. Weaver and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2010-08-24 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Oilfield Trash is written in a charming, flowing style that any reader will enjoy....In Weaver's capable hands, the gypsy lives of a generation of young men unfold on the rigorous stage of drilling fields...."---Paul Spellman, author of Spindletop Boom Days --

Download or read book Spills of Diluted Bitumen from Pipelines written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2016-03-22 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Diluted bitumen has been transported by pipeline in the United States for more than 40 years, with the amount increasing recently as a result of improved extraction technologies and resulting increases in production and exportation of Canadian diluted bitumen. The increased importation of Canadian diluted bitumen to the United States has strained the existing pipeline capacity and contributed to the expansion of pipeline mileage over the past 5 years. Although rising North American crude oil production has resulted in greater transport of crude oil by rail or tanker, oil pipelines continue to deliver the vast majority of crude oil supplies to U.S. refineries. Spills of Diluted Bitumen from Pipelines examines the current state of knowledge and identifies the relevant properties and characteristics of the transport, fate, and effects of diluted bitumen and commonly transported crude oils when spilled in the environment. This report assesses whether the differences between properties of diluted bitumen and those of other commonly transported crude oils warrant modifications to the regulations governing spill response plans and cleanup. Given the nature of pipeline operations, response planning, and the oil industry, the recommendations outlined in this study are broadly applicable to other modes of transportation as well.

Download or read book The Prize written by Daniel Yergin and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-09-11 with total page 1094 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Prize recounts the panoramic history of oil -- and the struggle for wealth power that has always surrounded oil. This struggle has shaken the world economy, dictated the outcome of wars, and transformed the destiny of men and nations. The Prize is as much a history of the twentieth century as of the oil industry itself. The canvas of this history is enormous -- from the drilling of the first well in Pennsylvania through two great world wars to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and Operation Desert Storm. The cast extends from wildcatters and rogues to oil tycoons, and from Winston Churchill and Ibn Saud to George Bush and Saddam Hussein. The definitive work on the subject of oil and a major contribution to understanding our century, The Prize is a book of extraordinary breadth, riveting excitement -- and great importance.

Download or read book The Iron Orchard written by Tom Pendleton and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-18 with total page 551 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1966 under the pen name Tom Pendleton, The Iron Orchard garnered a cult following for its authentic representation of the people and business of the Texas and American Southwest oil fields. Now available again in a new edition, The Iron Orchard tells the story of a young Texan, Jim McNeely, who is desperate to make a name for himself in the oil fields of Texas. Told from the inside by a man who knew the oil fields intimately, it is a vibrant, brutal story of the men who labored, sweated, lusted, and gambled their money and spirits to pump oil out of the earth. It is the adventure of violent men among other violent men. And it is the story of perseverance and love in the midst of one of America’s most dramatic industries. The Iron Orchard is magnificent and memorable reading.The Iron Orchard was a cowinner of the 1967 Texas Institute of Letters Jesse H. Jones Award for Best Work of Fiction along with Larry McMurtry’s The Last Picture Show. The Iron Orchard film premiered at the 2018 Dallas International Film Festival.

Download or read book Oil Prices and the Global Economy written by Mr.Rabah Arezki and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2017-01-27 with total page 30 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper presents a simple macroeconomic model of the oil market. The model incorporates features of oil supply such as depletion, endogenous oil exploration and extraction, as well as features of oil demand such as the secular increase in demand from emerging-market economies, usage efficiency, and endogenous demand responses. The model provides, inter alia, a useful analytical framework to explore the effects of: a change in world GDP growth; a change in the efficiency of oil usage; and a change in the supply of oil. Notwithstanding that shale oil production today is more responsive to prices than conventional oil, our analysis suggests that an era of prolonged low oil prices is likely to be followed by a period where oil prices overshoot their long-term upward trend.

Download or read book The Good Hand written by Michael Patrick F. Smith and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-02-16 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A book that should be read . . . Smith brings an alchemic talent to describing physical labor.” —The New York Times Book Review “Beautiful, funny, and harrowing.” – Sarah Smarsh, The Atlantic “Remarkable . . . this is the book that Hillbilly Elegy should have been.” —Kirkus Reviews A vivid window into the world of working class men set during the Bakken fracking boom in North Dakota Like thousands of restless men left unmoored in the wake of the 2008 economic crash, Michael Patrick Smith arrived in the fracking boomtown of Williston, North Dakota five years later homeless, unemployed, and desperate for a job. Renting a mattress on a dirty flophouse floor, he slept boot to beard with migrant men who came from all across America and as far away as Jamaica, Africa and the Philippines. They ate together, drank together, argued like crows and searched for jobs they couldn't get back home. Smith's goal was to find the hardest work he could do--to find out if he could do it. He hired on in the oil patch where he toiled fourteen hour shifts from summer's 100 degree dog days to deep into winter's bracing whiteouts, all the while wrestling with the demons of a turbulent past, his broken relationships with women, and the haunted memories of a family riven by violence. The Good Hand is a saga of fear, danger, exhaustion, suffering, loneliness, and grit that explores the struggles of America's marginalized boomtown workers—the rough-hewn, castoff, seemingly disposable men who do an indispensable job that few would exalt: oil field hands who, in the age of climate change, put the gas in our tanks and the food in our homes. Smith, who had pursued theater and played guitar in New York, observes this world with a critical eye; yet he comes to love his coworkers, forming close bonds with Huck, a goofy giant of a young man whose lead foot and quick fists get him into trouble with the law, and The Wildebeest, a foul-mouthed, dip-spitting truck driver who torments him but also trains him up, and helps Smith "make a hand." The Good Hand is ultimately a book about transformation--a classic American story of one man's attempt to burn himself clean through hard work, to reconcile himself to himself, to find community, and to become whole.

Download or read book Early Texas Oil written by Walter Rundell and published by . This book was released on 2000-06 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the beginning of this century oil transformed the Texas economy and wrought profound and lasting changes on life within the state. Here, in 328 contemporary photographs is an eyewitness record of the early days of the Texas oil industry. When Lyne Barret brought in the first well in 1866 near Nacogdoches, photography was in its adolescence, so the entire history of the Texas petroleum industry fortunately was documented by the camera. Although that well amounted to very little, thirty years later Corsicana proved the commercial success of Texas oil, and when Spindletop roared in on January 10, 1901, a new era began for Texas and the entire petroleum industry. Other fields opened--Saratoga, Sour Lake, Batson, Humble, Electra, Burkburnett, Goose Creek, Ranger, Desdemona, Breckenridge, Mexia, Big Lake, the Permian Basin, Borger, and the incomparable East Texas field--and camera men were there to capture the excitement of discovery and the changes brought by oil. Unforgettable photographs of oil-field folk--drillers, roustabouts, tool dressers, tycoons--of the bustling boom towns and the derrick-crowded fields, dramatically portray the people and how they lived and worked. Recorded too are primitive refineries, oil tankers under sail and steam, pipeline crews, and the "modern" transportation and retailing facilities of the 1930s. Walter Rundell's text provides the historical setting for the photographs, focusing always on the human element. This combination of pictures and text presents a vivid social history of early Texas oil and its tremendous impact on Texas and its people.