There were 211 drilling rigs operating in Oklahoma last week, the state’s highest level in almost six years, Bloomberg’s Lynn Doan and Richard Stubbe report.
Northwestern Oklahoma’s Mississippi Lime play continues to boom, and activity in the South-Central Oklahoma Oil Province — the so-called SCOOP — is starting to spin up, too. Oklahoma has 43 more rigs in operation than it did this time last year, which is a growth rate second only to Texas, which added 59, data from Baker Hughes show.
Together the two states are responsible for nearly half the country’s drilling activity, Nicholas Sakelaris with the Dallas Business Journal reports.
The recent oil boom has been credited with helping insulate Oklahoma from the Great Recession, which officially ended in June 2009. But new numbers from the federal government show just how much big of a role the energy industry has played in oil and gas states, the Associated Press reports. Emphasis mine:
Spending jumped 28 percent in North Dakota, the largest gain nationwide, from 2009 through 2012. It surged nearly 16 percent in Oklahoma. The next-largest increases were in South Dakota, Texas and West Virginia.
Oklahoma might even produce more crude oil than California, The Oklahoman‘s Energy Editor Adam Wilmoth told readers in the paper’s weekly energy chat.
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