Fracking turned Midland, Texas into a boom town

CNN Business:

For years, Midland, Texas, was a quiet corner of the oil patch, in the middle of the desert, hours away from the state's population centers. It knew oil booms and oil busts, but little changed year-to-year.

Then came fracking, and Midland, the center of a West Texas region known as the Permian Basin, would never be the same again.

The technology of injecting water into the ground to force up oil and gas locked in the shale put huge fossil fuel deposits within reach that had never been economically available before. Production soared, a key to the United States becoming the world's largest oil producer.

With increased oil production came an explosion in residents. The population of Midland reached 142,000 last year, up nearly 30% since the start of the decade. That's nearly triple the pace of growth of the previous 10 years. And the new, faster, growth shows no sign of slowing down. A study commissioned by the city forecasts Midland's population will reach 250,000 by 2030.

From the moment you exit the plane at the city's airport, called Midland International Air and Space Port despite its modest size, know you're in an oil town. Virtually every advertisement in the terminal is for businesses providing services to the oil industry, not for any of the consumer products that fill most airport concourses.

"Patriot Premium threading services — delivering quality tubular products," reads one sign.

"Get frack-grade water faster," reads another.

The same focus on oil is true throughout the downtown. Outside of a bank on the city's "Wall Street" is an electronic sign that lists not only time and temperature, but also current market prices for oil and gas, as well as oil rig counts both locally and nationwide.

Midland's unemployment rate is only 2%, nearly half of the near record-low national unemployment rate of 3.6%. Even when oil prices plunged to $30 a barrel in early 2016 and some drilling of new wells ground to a near halt, the unemployment rate never climbed above 5%.
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There is much more.

Twenty years ago it was hard to give away a house in Midland or other towns near the Permian Basin.  Now there is a shortage of almost everything including workers and fast-food restaurants pay premium wages.  When the economy is booming there is no need for a minimum wage.

The biggest cause for concern out there is that Democrats may be elected and kill those jobs and their big wages.