Texas Oil Production Plummeted in January
Texas oil production dropped in January by 90,000 barrels of oil per day. The decline has been attributed to explorers drilling significantly less after crude oil prices collapsed at the beginning of the year as well as a dearth of pipeline capacity from the Permian Basin of West Texas to the Gulf of Mexico.
"People are holding off and waiting until the capacity comes in -- they can get a much better price," said Michael Lynch, president of Strategic Energy and Economic Research in Winchester, Massachusetts. "This is why you’ve seen a lot of the drilled but uncompleted wells."
A cold snap in parts of the Permian at the start of the year, which caused production to be curtailed, may also have played a part.
"It just slows down things enough," Lynch said. "You get some wells that don’t get hooked up."