About 1.5 trillion barrels of oil have been produced in the world since 1900.1 The United States has accounted for about 17% of that total. When people think of oil production in the United States they think of Texas, and for good reason: Texas has accounted for one-third of the nation’s oil production since the first barrel flowed there in the 1860s.
Oil production in the first decades of the industry was concentrated in the Appalachian Basin, principally in the western portions of New York and Pennsylvania, as well as Ohio, Kentucky, and West Virginia. By the end of the 19th century oil production was underway in California, first in the Central Valley east of San Francisco, and then in and around Los Angeles. The early oil fields discovered in southern California–Kern River, Midway-Sunset, Elk Hills–were colossal and propelled California to be the leading oil producer by 1903. The state ranks second after Texas in all-time production through 2022.
Oil production also launched in the late 19th century in the Midcontinent region, principally Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas, and the Texas Panhandle. In Oklahoma, the Red Fork (1901) Glenn Pool (1905) discoveries transformed Tulsa into the self-proclaimed “oil capital of the world.” Oil companies flocked to the city to set up headquarters. Oklahoma rivaled Texas and California as the leading oil-producing state through the 1930s.
The Gulf Coast region, principally Louisiana and East Texas would become one of the largest oil-producing regions in the country. The discoveries of the Spindletop field near Beaumont, TX (1901) and the East Texas field (1930) had transformative effects on the state, the nation, and the global oil industry. In 1927 Texas assumed the lead among states in cumulative oil production. It remains the all-time leader, having produced 80 billion barrels of oil through 2022, nearly three times more than second-place California.
The Prudhoe Bay oil field on the North Slope of Alaska was discovered in 1968, but production did not begin until 1977 when the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) was completed. Its 13 billion barrels of recoverable oil ranks it among the 20 largest oil fields in the world. In the early 1990s, Alaska accounted for nearly one-quarter of the nation’s entire oil production. In 2022, Alaska produced less than four percent of the nation’s oil due to dwindling production from Prudhoe Bay combined with no significant discoveries.
The United States is unique in its approach to managing oil and gas production in offshore waters. States have jurisdiction over resources within a given distance of the coastline. For Texas and the Gulf Coast of Florida, state jurisdiction extends to nine nautical miles from the coast (1 nautical mile = 1.15 miles = 1.85 kilometers). For all other states, the limit is three nautical miles from the coast. The federal government has jurisdiction beyond those boundaries out to a distance of 200 nautical miles from the coast. This region is called the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS).
The first offshore well in the Gulf of Mexico was drilled in 14 feet of water about a mile from the Louisiana coast in 1938. Oil production in federal waters rapidly ramped up in the 1970s as offshore drilling technology advanced. By the early 2000s, more than one-quarter of the nation’s oil came from the OCS in the Gulf of Mexico. Some facilities operate in more than 8000 feet of water.
Hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, together known as “fracking,” revolutionized oil production beginning in the early 2000s. Oil production expanded in longstanding production centers such as the Permian Basin (western Texas and southeastern New Mexico) and new areas in North Dakota, Colorado, and Wyoming. By the 2010s, oil production in the United States reached record levels, the nation was the largest producer of oil in the world and a net exporter of oil. Rising production enabled oil to average a 38% share of total energy consumption since the fracking boom began.
1 1900-2016: The Shift Project, World Oil Production, accessed August 21, 2023, Link
