Oil & gas by state
Texas
The biggest oil and gas state by a wide margin: about two of every five U.S. barrels, and the most rigs running.
Live, updated weekly
At the pump this week
Regular gasoline · Texas average
$3.78
Diesel · Gulf Coast (PADD 3) average
$5.81
Gasoline: Texas average. Diesel: Gulf Coast (PADD 3) average. Week of Oct 12, 2026.3
By the numbers
Far ahead of the rest
Texas averaged 5.76 million barrels a day in 2025. Second-place New Mexico averaged 2.2 million. In July 2026 Texas made 5.77 million a day, still first.
Worth knowing
Six things about Texas oil
Spindletop changed the business
The Lucas gusher near Beaumont came in on January 10, 1901, at 1,139 feet. It flowed an estimated 75,000 to 100,000 barrels a day for nine days before it was capped.5
East Texas is the giant
Dad Joiner's Daisy Bradford No. 3 opened the East Texas field on October 3, 1930. The field has made nearly 5.2 billion barrels from about 30,340 wells across 140,000 acres.6
The governor sent in troops
On August 17, 1931, Gov. Ross Sterling sent the National Guard and Texas Rangers to shut in all 1,644 wells in the East Texas field after flush production crashed the price of crude. A federal court ruled the martial law illegal on February 2, 1932.6
A railroad agency runs oil
The Legislature created the Railroad Commission in 1891 to regulate railroads. It got authority over oil pipelines as common carriers in 1917, and later over well spacing and production.7
New Mexico is a distant second
In 2025 Texas produced 2.10 billion of the nation's 4.99 billion barrels of crude. Next was New Mexico, at 805 million.1
History
From Spindletop to the Permian
Texas had oil long before it had an oil industry: seeps, a few shallow wells, the first small fields. But the moment everyone points to is January 10, 1901, on a salt dome outside Beaumont called Spindletop. A crew working for Anthony Lucas was down a little over 1,100 feet when the hole blew mud, then pipe, then oil over the derrick. It ran wild for nine days, by estimates at 75,000 to 100,000 barrels a day, before they got it capped.5
Overnight, oil went from a lamp-oil business to a fuel business. Some of the companies that came together around that field grew into names everybody knows.
The next 30 years were one boom after another. Then in 1930 an old promoter named Dad Joiner, on his third try in Rusk County, brought in the Daisy Bradford No. 3, and East Texas turned out to be enormous. Too much oil, too fast, with no rules. Prices crashed. In 1931 the governor sent the National Guard and the Rangers to shut the field in. Out of that mess came proration: the Railroad Commission setting how much each well could produce.
Texas makes about 42% of the crude the U.S. produces.
West Texas had its own run. The Permian Basin spent decades as a steady conventional workhorse. Waterfloods and CO2 floods squeezed more out of old reservoirs. Then horizontal drilling and multi-stage fracturing arrived, first proven in the Barnett Shale around Fort Worth, then the Eagle Ford in South Texas, and finally the stacked pays of the Permian. Midland and Odessa went from oil towns to the center of the oil world.
The work behind the numbers is the same as it's always been: rig hands, frac crews, wireline, pumpers and engineers. A lot of them have been on Local Energy.
On the show
Texas episodes
On the record
“The energy behind that industry is so immense. We in Midland are excellent at generating it. And unfortunately, we are not the best at getting it to the marketplace.”
In January 2025, in the inaugural address
“We will drill, baby, drill.”
He was talking about the country as a whole, not Texas in particular. Texas already makes about two of every five U.S. barrels.
FAQ
Questions people ask
- How much oil does Texas produce?
- About 5.76 million barrels a day in 2025, or 2.10 billion barrels for the year, per EIA. July 2026 averaged 5.77 million barrels a day.
- Is Texas the largest oil-producing state?
- Yes, by a wide margin. In 2025 Texas made about 42% of U.S. crude. Second-place New Mexico averaged 2.2 million barrels a day.
- How much natural gas does Texas produce?
- EIA puts 2025 marketed gas production at 12.66 trillion cubic feet, about 34.7 billion cubic feet a day and 29% of the U.S. total. That's #1 among states.
- How many drilling rigs are running in Texas?
- 278, in Baker Hughes' count for the week ending Oct 16, 2026. That's down 3 on the week and up 41 from a year earlier, and still the most of any state.
- Why are the Railroad Commission's numbers different from EIA's?
- They measure differently. RRC reports crude oil and condensate separately, from operator filings that get revised for months. EIA's state crude figure includes lease condensate and is estimated. For July 2026, RRC's preliminary crude-plus-condensate total was 147.4 million barrels, against EIA's 178.8 million.
Other states
Where the numbers come from
- EIA, Crude oil production by state, annual and monthly, thousand barrels a day and thousand barrels. Released Sep 30, 2026. Ranks are among the 50 states, excluding federal offshore. The U.S. share is computed (2,102,613 ÷ 4,986,606 thousand barrels), as is the 2020 to 2025 change. eia.gov ↩
- Baker Hughes, North America Rotary Rig Count, week ending Oct 16, 2026 (237 a year earlier; New Mexico next at 96). bakerhughes.com ↩
- EIA, Gasoline and Diesel Fuel Update, weekly retail prices: Texas regular gasoline, all formulations (EMM_EPMR_PTE_STX_DPG), and Gulf Coast (PADD 3) No. 2 diesel (EMD_EPD2D_PTE_R30_DPG). EIA doesn't publish a Texas diesel average. Read from EIA's API when the page loads. eia.gov ↩
- EIA, Natural gas marketed production by state, 2025 and July 2026 (12,656,556 and 1,157,796 MMcf). Released Sep 30, 2026. The U.S. share is computed. eia.gov ↩
- Texas State Historical Association, Handbook of Texas: Spindletop Oilfield. tshaonline.org ↩
- Texas State Historical Association, Handbook of Texas: East Texas Oilfield. tshaonline.org ↩
- Texas State Historical Association, Handbook of Texas: Railroad Commission. tshaonline.org ↩
- Inaugural Address, Compilation of Presidential Documents, DCPD-202500103, Jan 20, 2025. govinfo.gov ↩