Shale firms pledge $100M to aid W. Texas needs
Seventeen energy companies operating in West Texas' booming Permian Basin said they’re pledging more than $100 million to help improve roads, schools, health care, housing and workforce training.
The mostly rural region in West Texas and southeastern New Mexico was upended by the oil-drilling resurgence in Permian in the last couple of years, which has overwhelmed roads, housing and community services with the influx of workers, trucks and traffic,
The Permian Strategic Partnership, which was formed this year, has quickly grown from a handful of companies to 17 and counting. The list includes Big Oil companies such as Chevron, Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell, as well as a bevy of large independent producers, such as Houston area companies Occidental Petroleum, EOG Resources, Anadarko Petroleum Corp., and Apache Corp., and major services providers such as Schlumberger and Halliburton of Houston.
The partnership said its pledge would serve as seed money for public-private partnerships to help support the growth in West Texas. After all, the energy companies said, they need better
roads, struggle to housing, health care and schools to accommodate their employees. Housing has been a particular problem: For most of this year, the Midland-Odessa region has represented the nation’s hottest housing market, according to the National Association of Realtors, beating out coastal tech centers like San Francisco and Boston.
The companies announced the initiative Monday in a letter published in the Midland Reporter-Telegram, a sister paper of the Houston Chronicle.
“A once-in-a-generation opportunity has brought us together for a common purpose — to strengthen the communities where we live and work,” the partnership said in the announcement.
The plan is, in the coming months, for the partnership to open an office and hire staff to help lead the effort. Early next year, the companies will launch a series of community meetings to invite citizen input and recruit volunteers.
“This will be a long-term process,” the announcement stated. “Building new roads, recruiting new doctors and teachers, and developing new neighborhoods will require years of work, substantial resources and sustained cooperation among many entities. But we share a sense of urgency with our communities to find both interim and long-term solutions.”