Well I drive from Houston to Lubbock quite often - a 10 hour drive so I'm fairly aware of the vast amounts of "untouched" land even in this State - the frozen tundra isn't even inhabitable in some areas - liberals would complain about clean air if we were for it -
On the occasions when I've flown across the country I amazed at how vast and empty it largely is. I recently spent 5 weeks in Texas, and even in the DFW metroplex, if you get off the main avenues in the suburbs there's still plenty of wide-open spaces.
My understanding of the oil industry here in TX is, they intend to start drilling in many areas again. There is quite a bit of oil here, that up until now was too expensive to get out the ground.
I have some friends who used to work the rigs years ago. I talked with one this past weekend, and he may be going back to being a roughneck.