Over the past five years, a new American oil boom has come and gone and a polarizing debate about oil extraction and transport dominates the popular press. In this discussion, the economic need of oil communities has been pitted against the oil industry’s environmental consequences, with American oil companies understood as either exploitative invaders or patriotic job-bringers. In Texas, where industry ties run deep, this popular duality correlates sharply with political affiliation.
Addressing the origins of such contemporary connections, this project follows oil contractors, technicians, engineers, and scientists through the glory days of Texas oil production, 1920 to 1980. It tracks the role that the domestic oil industry played in the political and social development of Texas and the US and identifies alternating patterns of local resistance to industry regulation and indifference to worsening environmental contamination.
This book asks: How has oil’s distinct, insular culture been shaped by the industry’s response to environmental hazards and workplace risk? What are the parallels between oil’s technical evolution and the social development of the American workplace? Can this story help contextualize oil communities’ opposition to state regulatory administrations? Can it explain Southwest grassroots neo-conservativism?