As of May 13, 2024, the Permian Region of Texas had 317 active drilling rigs, up from 315 the previous month. This is down from 356 rigs one year earlier, a decrease of 10.96%. The Permian Basin is the region in the United States with the most oil rigs, about six times more than the second-ranked Eagle Ford Basin, which is also mostly located in Texas.

The Permian Basin is a sizable sedimentary basin that extends across 55 counties in western Texas and southeast New Mexico in the United States. It is renowned for having abundant quantities of natural gas, petroleum, and potassium. It is made up of more than 7,000 fields and spans an area of more than 86,000 square miles that is roughly 250 miles broad and 300 miles long.

The historic well’s oil discovery began in 1919 when attorney and oil speculator Rupert Ricker applied to lease rights on more than 430,000 acres of arid land designated by the state for the financing of the University of Texas. As time ran out to pay a filing fee of about $43,000, Ricker failed to raise money from Fort Worth investors.

“Nobody seemed to have any interest in the deal so with the deadline looming he sold the entire scheme to El Pasoans Frank T. Pickrell and Haymon Krupp for the sum of $2,500,” noted a 2017 article in the Permian Basin Petroleum Association Magazine.

Oil production had decreased more than 60% from its peak in the early 1970s by the mid-2000s. With the advent of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing methods, the number of rigs used for horizontal drilling has increased from 275 in January 2022 to 329 in August 2022. The Permian Basin’s production has increased as a result.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) stated in its productivity report of June that oil output in the Permian is due to increase by 84,000 barrels per day (bpd) to a record 5.316 million bpd.