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Chevron, EOG Resources, Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell are
among 17 companies backing the Permian Strategic Partnership, as
the consortium is called, Don Evans, a former U.S. government
official and energy executive helping launch the group, told
Reuters on Saturday.
The group seeks to address labor and housing shortages,
overtaxed health care and traffic congestion caused in part by
companies descending on the Permian Basin, the nation's largest
oilfield, where they hope to pump billions of dollars' worth of
oil and gas in coming decades, experts said.
“It's a significant amount of money, but these are huge
challenges,” said Evans, a former U.S. Secretary of Commerce who
lives in Midland, Texas, the epicenter of the shale oil
revolution. “We don't have enough teachers. We don't have enough
doctors.”
The group aims to work with regional and federal officials,
companies, nonprofit groups and educators in New Mexico and
Texas, said Evans, who started in the Permian and became CEO of
producer Tom Brown Inc before joining the administration of
former President George W. Bush.
The group is assembling plans to hold meetings in communities
across the region, so "everyone have a voice" in the
undertaking. There is no timetable or plan for how the initial
contribution will be spent. The group is recruiting staff and
searching for office space, he said.
In the last decade, the region's many pockets of oil and low
production costs have led to gold rush-like conditions in the
Permian. Companies are pouring staff and equipment into the
oilfield, which is expected to pump 3.7 million barrels of oil
per day by December, four times its rate in 2010, according to
the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
That boom has local employers, including restaurants and school
systems, under pressure from staff leaving for oilfield jobs.
Midland's unemployment rate was 2.1 percent in October, compared
to the nation's 3.7 percent rate.
The last decade's shale boom also has led to school
overcrowding, soaring traffic fatalities, drug abuse and strains
on the power grid because of the activity.
“Our roads are not designed to handle the amount of truck
traffic we have,” said Jeff Walker, transportation training
coordinator at New Mexico Junior College in Hobbs.
Drug charges in Midland more than doubled between 2012 and 2016,
to 942 from 491, according to police data. Traffic accidents
also jumped 18 percent between 2016 and 2017 in Midland County,
and 29 percent in nearby Ector County, according to Texas
Department of Transportation data.
“They all agree that scaling up infrastructure is going to be a
huge challenge,” said Bob Peterson, a partner at consultancy
Arthur D. Little who advises producers. "There’s a common
agreement that there’s a whole bundle of problems."
(Reporting by Jennifer Hiller; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
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