In West Texas, growing oil production comes with deadly highways
The fracking boom that’s made the U.S. the world’s top oil producer shows no signs of slowing down. But in Texas, the boom’s had what the state is calling an “unintended consequence," as oilfield highways have become overwhelmed with heavy truck traffic, there’s been an uptick in the number of deadly crashes. Officials are exploring solutions to this ongoing problem.
The West Texas Permian Basin is hours away from the state’s major cities, but it’s still normal to find yourself stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic there. That’s because it takes a lot of trucks to get fossil fuels out of the ground. A study by Texas A&M University in 2016 estimated that drilling and fracking a single oil or gas well in the Permian can involve almost 1,000 trucks, hauling things like drilling equipment and sand. As a result, driving oilfield roads can be treacherous. “It gets very scary and very stressful,” said Jose Narbaiz, a trucker who hauls sand for a living in West Texas.