Posted on 08/27/2014 5:05:10 AM PDT by thackney
In a preview of priorities for the next legislative session, state lawmakers at a hearing on Tuesday examined the ways the oil boom is changing life in Texas.
Since the legislature last convened in 2013, budget officials have reported an unexpectedly large windfall from taxes on the petroleum industry, filling state coffers with a multi-billion dollar opportunity to address issues like the water shortage, transportation gridlock and troubled public schools. But industry practices have also wrecked roads, strained infrastructure, vexed police departments, drained water resources, polluted the air and set off knotty disputes among landowners, royalty claimants and oil companies.
Above all, the oil boom has emerged as a singular force driving the state’s great challenge of the 21st century, the post-urbanization population surge.
The industry now employs more than 400,000 people in the state, at an average salary of $120,000 according figures presented at the hearing by the Texas Oil & Gas Association.
“These are good jobs,” said James LeBas,...
(Excerpt) Read more at fuelfix.com ...
$48 billion in wages
$11 billion a year in royalties to 570,000 families
Where are you at and what do you do now?
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