Silicon Valley is being snubbed for Texas by millenials around the world, who are enticed by the Lone Star State’s plentiful, lucrative opportunities. Texas’ booming gas and oil industry provides young transplants with the chance to find success as oil barons, businessmen, investors, engineers, and landmen.
27-year-old Mark Hiduke, a young Texas oilman, told Bloomberg News that the gas and oil boom has “created a lot of opportunity for young professionals to jump in and be given enormous responsibility. It’s pretty much tech and then energy.”
Hiduke reportedly raised $100 million to build his company, PetroCore LLC, which is a mere three weeks old.
New drilling technology has shifted the focus of the oil industry, and provided an ideal opportunity for millenials to enter the scene. According to Bloomberg News, “conventional drilling” is likely to retire with baby boomers, since the technological breakthrough and the new generation of oilmen are grabbing hold of the industry simultaneously.
While gas and oil were previously highly unpredictable, the “Shale revolution” made the industry more stable and attractive to young people.
30-year-old Matt Miller, a former consultant who co-founded Texas-based Grey Rock Energy Partners, told Bloomberg News, “What you had was an industry that went up, went down, there were constantly people getting laid off, and people got to the point where they just didn’t want to be in the oil industry. That’s why you see that 20-year gap, because the industry was so tormented until 2005.”
The exploding industry has created a bountiful job market where millenials can put a variety of skill sets to use.
“Oil and gas is driving our economy,” Sarah Higgins, a spokeswoman for the West Texas town Midland, told Breitbart Texas.
Traditional leading markets like Los Angeles see roughly 10 percent of the population often unable to find a job. But many of Texass cities–including Midland, which is home to an unemployment rate of just 3.2 percent–have the opposite problem thanks to humming gas and oil.
“We have issues filling our jobs,” Higgins said. “In the past, the price of oil has driven whether or not we’re in a boom or a bust. [But] this boom is expected to last longer is because this boom is technology driven.”
Indeed, the future of Texas’ expanding industry appears to be bright. The only foreseeable potential threat?
Overregulation.
“Is a gas and oil ‘bust’ coming? That’s a political question more than a natural resources question,” Josiah Neeley, a Policy Analyst at theTexas Public Policy Foundation told Breitbart Texas. “Estimates state that there are enough resources under the ground to allow the oil andgas boom to continue and get bigger. The potential danger has to do with regulations that could potentially be instated.”
Neeley continued, “If Texas had the legislature of California or New York, that would definitely pose a threat to the industry. The state can place all sorts of restrictions on oil and gas development. We’ve seen that before in places like New York. The political environment in Texas is very important. If the voting populous changes, that environment could also change.”
It is unlikely, however, that exodus from blue states will shift Texas’ political landscape.
Breitbart Texas previously reported that most Lone Star State transplants appear to be conservatives seeking refuge. A joint study conducted by the University of Texas and Texas Tribune confirmed that the majority of Texas’ fresh migrants from California are self-proclaimed conservatives seeking refuge.
If left largely unregulated, the growing gas and oil industry will allow young ambitious Texans, and indeed all U.S. citizens, to prosper for decades to come.
Follow Kristin Tate on Twitter @KristinBTate.