Oil and gas drilling take off around Midland, Texas

New technology and oil exploration has changed forecasts about how much oil and gas sit below southwest Texas. As the estimated reserves of fossil fuel has gone up, so to have the number of rigs drilling in the Permian basin—causing production in the region to jump after years of decline.

Estimated crude oil in the basin

Active rigs

Crude oil produced

Increased oil and gas production buoys Texas jobs

Texas crude oil production has shot up 86.8 percent since bottoming out at 391 million barrels in 2007. Increased drilling means oil and gas extraction jobs have jumped by about 50 percent in that time, rising from 163,000 in 2007 to 244,000 jobs in 2012.

U.S. oil output beats imports

As domestic oil production has increased, the amount of petroleum products the U.S. has needed to import has declined. October was the first month since 1995 that the U.S. produced more crude oil than it imported.