Texas' $61 BILLION (for now!) Eagle Ford payoff

"Having then gifts differeing according to the grace that is given us, let us use them." Romans 12:6

It's amazing what you can accomplish when you develop the resources with which God graced you:

Last year, the Eagle Ford Shale had a $61 billion impact and supported 116,000 jobs across a 20-county swath of South Texas — a once-sleepy region increasingly defined by an oil and gas boom.

Even using more narrow criteria, the results are impressive:

 The direct impact alone is enormous: the study counts more than 46,000 people directly employed thanks to the oil field last year.

 And we haven't seen ANYTHING yet:

So far, more than 5,400 Eagle Ford wells have been permitted by the Texas Railroad Commission, but the study expects more than 24,000 wells in the region by 2022.

Even as the field matures and fewer people work on drilling sites, there still will be thousands processing, transporting and refining that oil and gas, and everyone from attorneys to restaurant employees working along the way.

In a decade the study's authors figure that a “new normal” will mean that oil and gas will remain the region's economic behemoth, employing more than 36,000 people directly and with an economic output of more than $50 billion.

 Imagine what we could accomplish if we didn't have to constantly fight Washington.