What to know about the Texas oil boom

Taylor Sheridan Landman is rooted in real-world inspiration, with a broader real story to explore. Billy Bob Thornton plays Tommy Norris in Landman cast, leading a star-studded ensemble that also includes Jon Hamm, Demi Moore and Ali Larter. Although Tommy Norris may be entirely fictional, the characters on Taylor Sheridan’s TV shows are often amalgamations of real-life figuresin this case offering viewers a glimpse into a generalized interpretation of what an authentic oil tanker might actually look and sound like.

Landman’s The first two episodes offer a lot to unpack, as audiences are thrown into the high-stakes world of Texas oil on multiple levels, from urban CEOs to crisis management and the teams working on the patch. As usual, the yellow stone creator developed his show with guaranteed entertainment, but there are also a remarkable level of candor in representations that can only come from dense research into the real-life subject. Taylor Sheridan combines his usual snappy, snappy dialogue with a factual basis, making Landman a fascinating new series.

Landman is based on the podcast, Boomtown

Boomtown only has 12 episodes and is worth checking out

In the world of modern media, podcasts are as viable as a source of adaptation as books, and Christian Wallace’s 12-episode series Expanding city is the basis for the new Paramount+ show. The podcast was launched at the end of 2019 and examines the contemporary oil boom in the Permian Basin, one of the world’s most productive regions for the energy industry. Wallace grew up in Andrews, Texas, and spent a year working as an oilfield laborer on drilling rigs, similar to what is shown in Cooper’s story in the first two episodes of Landman.

Expanding city frames the current oil boom in a historical perspective, examining the region’s past and ensuring that the current level of productivity is finite. This is something Thornton’s Tommy Norris explains in episode 2 when meeting with local landowners, specifying that when oilmen like him leave the area, so will the money. An oil boom is a volatile game changer for their region, forcing longtime farmers and other business owners to reconsider their status in the area. Like the podcast, Landman examines the effects of the trillion-dollar oil industry on the humans involved.

When exploring the content of Expanding cityIt’s pretty clear where Landman draw inspiration for various ideas. In Landman’s in the opening episode, Cooper’s entire crew, all relatives, die in a platform explosion, and in episode 2 we see Tommy breaking the news to his family. One of the topics of the podcast was the Martinez family, who lost three generations of parents due to one incident. The podcast also looks at the local “breasaurants” who inspired the bikini cafe in Landman episode 1.

Texas’ Real Oil Boom in the Permian Basin Explained

The Permian Basin is a historic region for the development of the United States

The Permian Basin became the most profitable oil region in the United States in the early 20th century, originally defined by a period known as the “Texas oil boom.” In 1901, an oil discovery near Beaumont, Texas, revealed an enormous-scale oil reserve that triggered a wave of land development that has hardly been rivaled in U.S. history. Texas was a mostly rural landscape before the turn of the century, and the oil boom resulted in rapid expansion into cities like Houston, San Antonio, and more.

It cannot be underestimated how substantial this event was, driving the United States to become the country with the largest oil production in the worldovertaking Russia. Much of the state’s landscape and infrastructure, as displayed in Landmanare the result of this historical period. Given the risk involved in the oil industry, the success of the Permian Basin has ebbed and flowed over the years. Some booms have resulted in companies bringing in such large numbers of workers that local regions would run out of housing and hotel rooms, and that’s just one of many things that could go wrong.

How much oil is produced in the Permian Basin today?

The Permian Basin has stabilized since 2023

A study of Baker Hughes reported by NPR examines the number of active oil drillings per week in the Permian Basin since 2011. The peak in the last fourteen years was in late 2014, with 568 rigs operating in a week. The data dropped to 134 in the spring of 2016 and then dropped further to 117 in 2020, shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic. It has steadily increased to decent numbers since then, with 348 platforms reported as of June 2023. The study explains that, despite not producing as much as in previous years, the oil economy is prospering.

The total number of platforms has stabilized at around 300 since 2023, which is due to several factors. Supply shortages and difficulty finding workers are some of the main causes, but it is also due to investors expecting cash returns rather than targeting more oil production. Since Taylor Sheridan Landman the series is contemporary, one can assume this is a similar work ecosystem to what Tommy is dealing with. It will be interesting to see if Sheridan explores the geopolitical aspect of oil production in the Permian Basin.

How realistic is Landman?

Landman presents dramatized authenticity

Like any Taylor Sheridan TV show, Landman it was written intelligently enough to be believable. He co-created the program alongside Christian Wallace, many of the subjects and insights from Expanding city could be contributed directly to the series straight from the source. This helps to build an authentic and Things like work language, work culture, and character archetypes will likely be drawn directly from the types of people Wallace met in his experiences. That said, though, Taylor Sheridan’s shows always have elements of the soap opera genre that probably aren’t particularly realistic.

For example, there are probably a plethora of Tommy Norris-like figures in the real-world oil industry, but in day-to-day life, they probably aren’t as entertaining or dramatized. As for the events of the series, so far there hasn’t been much that seems outright outrageous. The platform’s outburst definitely seemed to be rooted in fact and based on the aforementioned Martinez family story. An oil executive being kidnapped by the cartel and making jokes to escape might be some kind of Taylor Sheridan television outburst, but that’s exactly what Landman it needs.

Sources: NPR