A good related article from The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/01/01/the-dark-bounty-of-texas-oil https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/

A good related article from The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/01/01/the-dark-bounty-of-texas-oil https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/01/01/the-dark-bount... Interesting pieces: In large part because of high oil prices, a disproportionate share of America’s economic growth over the past decade has come from Texas. The gross domestic product of the state is $1.6 trillion; if it were an independent country, its economy would settle in around tenth place, eclipsing those of Canada and Australia. California, with forty per cent more residents, has a G.D.P. of $2.6 trillion, but since 2000 job growth in both Dallas and Houston has expanded by about thirty per cent—three times the rate of Los Angeles. .. .. Because native Texans were suspicious of outside corporate interests—especially John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil—two local companies were formed to develop the new field: Gulf Oil and Texaco. (Both companies have since merged with Chevron.) .. .. To entice investors to help him drill yet another well, he drew up fake geological reports indicating the presence of salt domes and stratified-rock folds, which can trap oil and natural-gas deposits beneath them. The phony report suggested that, at thirty-five hundred feet, a well could tap into one of the greatest oil deposits in the world. Once again, a wild prediction turned out to be true.