The Permian Basin is home to America’s most productive oil field, but soon the region could earn another distinction — as a testing ground for self-driving trucks.
At least two companies in the Permian Basin are using automated vehicles to transport oil-field supplies to sites across West Texas. Both operations are still in their infancy, but advocates say it speaks to a budding new collaboration between Big Tech and Big Oil.
“The era of superhuman logistics has arrived,” declared Chris Urmson, the CEO of Aurora Innovation, an automated truck company, in an analyst call last week.
Aurora inked a deal last year with Detmar Logistics, which provides sand to major fossil fuel developers. Sand is used by fracking companies to coax oil and gas from the ground, and — thanks to Aurora’s self-driving trucks — Detmar Logistics now can haul sand 20 hours a day between the Texas cities of Midland and Monahans.
For now, safety drivers are riding inside the truck cabs — which is notable because much of the Midland-Monahans route runs along Interstate 20, a major highway. But Aurora expects by midyear the trucks will travel on their own, without a human on board.
That’s a step forward compared to the other Texas operation. Another sand-hauling company, Atlas Logistics, has used driverless trucks from Kodiak AI, a California firm, to deliver sand in the Permian Basin since 2024. But those routes have been on private roads.
“Our work with Atlas demonstrates the Kodiak Driver’s ability to provide value to commercial trucking customers,” Kodiak CEO Don Burnette said in a statement last year. “We believe the driverless operational experience we’re gaining in the Permian Basin will position us to more efficiently scale our driverless operations across domains, including on-highway.”
The expansion of automated vehicles into the Permian Basin has brought with it many of the same safety concerns that have followed other self-driving efforts nationwide. But Texas lawmakers — both at home and in Washington — have been largely supportive.
“Automated vehicles, or AVS for short, are no longer theoretical. Like it or not, they are here, and they will be central to the future of roadways,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said at a recent commerce committee hearing.
In many ways, the Permian Basin is a natural place for Big Oil and Big Tech to come together.
Much of the region is rural, which reduces the chances of an accident. And the local fossil fuel industry — which is always searching for ways to cut costs — is a target-rich environment for self-driving truck companies looking to get a foot in the door.
It doesn’t hurt either that Texas has taken a light-handed approach to both autonomous trucks and self-driving cars such as robotaxis. Both Kodiak and Aurora have operations in the Dallas area, and did test runs on freeways in the state.
Aurora, which formed in 2017, originally focused on long-distance trucking as it developed the combination of sensors and software that control its automated trucks. The company was already hauling freight between cities in Texas when Detmar Logistics inquired about using self-driving trucks in the oil field.
Aurora, which is based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, expects to have 200 self-driving trucks equipped with its Aurora Driver system operating across the southwestern United States by the end of the year.
“If you’re in the Sun Belt in 2026, you won’t just read about the Aurora Driver, you’ll see it,” said Urmson, Aurora’s CEO, on last week’s analyst call.
Short-distance trips in the oil patch could wind up being more profitable for automated trucks since they’re less complex than long-distance routes, said Ryan Jones, a researcher at the Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute at North Dakota State University.
“You can potentially deploy the trucks sooner and then get more revenue from the trucks,” he said in an interview.
Trucking is a huge part of oil and gas development, particularly since hydraulic fracturing revolutionized the industry. Each well site requires the equivalent of more than 900 loaded 18-wheelers to deliver drilling equipment, chemicals, water and sand, the Texas A&M Transportation Institute estimated in a 2016 report.
The boom in truck traffic has contributed to an increase in fatal wrecks. In 2022, the fatality rate in Texas’ energy-producing regions, which includes the Permian Basin, was more than double the statewide rate, according to the state Department of Transportation.
The need for trucks has only grown as major producers such as Exxon Mobil, Chevron and ConocoPhillips have consolidated production in the Permian Basin. They’ve cut costs and reduced the number of employees needed for drilling and fracturing. At the same time, they’ve drilled horizontal wells that stretch as long as 4 miles and experimented with new techniques to break open underground rock formations.
Once the rock is fractured, the process relies on sand to wedge into the tiny cracks in the formation and allow trapped oil and gas to keep flowing. The amount of sand used per well has grown by two-thirds since 2017, requiring hundreds more truck trips per well, Atlas said in an investor presentation.
Atlas operates a 42-mile conveyor belt to move sand from mines near Kermit, Texas, to well sites as far away as the New Mexico state line. The company is using Kodiak’s automated trucks to move sand from the conveyor system to well sites.
Aurora said it’ll be carrying sand on Interstate 20, the main highway connecting Midland, Odessa and other communities in the region. It’s the first time companies have used automated trucks on public roads for frac sand, although Aurora and other companies have driven through the region making other deliveries.
Aurora and Kodiak have made presentations to local governments and law enforcement agencies, which has helped ease some of the fears associated with self-driving trucks, said James Beauchamp, executive director of the MOTRAN Alliance, a civic group that promotes road funding in Midland and Odessa.
The companies have argued that automated trucks can be safer than human drivers since they don’t get fatigued or distracted. And they likely won’t replace all the driving jobs, since the Permian Basin has a chronic shortage of drivers anyway.
“These are going to be doing certain things where it makes sense,” Beauchamp said.
State and federal lawmakers weigh in
The most recent self-driving law in Texas, which passed last year and is still being rolled out by state agencies, clarifies how police interact with autonomous vehicles during traffic stops and other emergencies. It also gives the state Department of Motor Vehicles a limited amount of authority to step in if companies have safety problems.
Instead of shutting down an entire company, the DMV can block individual vehicles or fleets from operating autonomously, although companies still can keep operating if they put a driver in the vehicle, said state Sen. Robert Nichols, a Republican who chairs the state Senate Transportation Committee.
“I see incremental changes. You don’t want to push them out of Texas,” he said. “You don’t want to strangle innovation and trucking.”
The debate in Texas comes as Congress considers whether and how to regulate the autonomous vehicle industry.
A bill to create a federal framework for the new industry could be included in the next surface transportation bill, which both the House and Senate have pledged to pass this year.
Cruz already has voiced support for the industry.
“My home state of Texas understands that clear rules enable growth, investment and safety,” Cruz said at a Feb. 4 Commerce Committee hearing.
Others are more willing to tap the brakes.
Congress needs to address widespread concerns about safety, which will require more vigorous oversight from the federal government, Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) said at the same hearing.
“Fully autonomous vehicles offer the potential to reduce crashes on roads, but we have seen the risk of letting companies beta test on our roads,” she said in a nod to wrecks involving Teslas and other cars with automated capabilities.
Bryant Walker Smith, an associate law professor at the University of South Carolina who studies automated-vehicle safety, said the federal government needs to provide vigorous oversight, not just to protect the public but to build confidence in the industry as well.
“Vehicles placed on our roads stay there for decades,” Smith said at the Commerce Committee hearing with Cruz and Cantwell. “And therefore need oversight for decades.”
This story also appears in Energywire.
