FORT STOCKTON, Texas — Warnings of doom and gloom have been hovering over the U.S. oil and gas industry for months, but don’t tell that to people in the Permian Basin.
Traffic near the New Mexico-Texas state line backs up with fracking crews and water haulers making their way to remote drilling sites. Trailer parks are filled with oil field workers near the towns of Pecos and Kermit. Drivers hum in and out of gas stations, grabbing snacks and energy drinks.
The Permian Basin — the most productive onshore oil region in North America — has been a linchpin for the Trump administration’s plans for “energy dominance.” While the basin is churning out near-record amounts of oil this year, the U.S. Energy Information Administration has warned that domestic production may dip by as much as 100,000 barrels a day next year amid lower oil prices. Some executives suggested that U.S. oil production may have already peaked, while companies such as Chevron and ConocoPhillips have announced job cuts.
But in West Texas, folks are more optimistic.
“I would say that the death of the Permian oil field has been declared many times in the past, and it hasn’t happened yet,” said Sara Harris, executive director of the Midland Development Corp., a nonprofit that provides local economic development incentives.
That optimism in the face of bleak oil price projections and economic concerns helps President Donald Trump retain support in West Texas. According to POLITICO’s election results tally, Trump won 94 percent of the vote in Glasscock County, located just east of Midland, and had more than 80 percent support in 12 of the 17 counties in the Permian Basin Workforce Board Development area. His support is weaker in Texas overall, with the Texas Politics Project showing the president’s job approval rating down from 52 percent in February to 43 percent in August.
Much of West Texas’ support could be chalked up to Trump’s support of the oil and gas industry and regional politics, said Brandon Rottinghaus, a professor of political science at the University of Houston. Harris said more than half of jobs in Midland are directly or indirectly tied to the oil and gas industry — a proportion that grows higher in more rural parts of the Permian like Fort Stockton, Pecos and Monahans.
“Everyone has to pick a team, and the Republicans generally are going to be more favorable towards the oil industry than the Democrats,” Rottinghaus said. “I think that’s probably the biggest factor.”
Trump made a high-profile visit to West Texas in July 2020, saying he would defend the oil industry’s jobs.
In a recent statement to POLITICO’s E&E News, White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said record high oil production in the U.S. and in Texas has been spurred by the Trump administration’s efforts to reduce bureaucracy in the oil field.
“President Trump is providing producers with the resources they need to unleash innovation, reduce breakeven costs, and lead in global energy markets to provide affordable and reliable energy,” Rogers wrote. “President Trump is making the U.S. the powerhouse of oil and gas production once again, and we will continue to ‘DRILL, BABY, DRILL.'”
Overall employment, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, grew by 2.5 percent from the first quarter to the second quarter in the Midland-Odessa region, compared to job growth of 1.1 percent in the U.S. and 1.6 percent across Texas. Average hourly earnings in the region jumped by 9.9 percent over the same period to an average of $37.23, while home sales volume climbed 9.9 percent in June 2025 compared to June 2024.
No downturn in sight?
Since taking office, Trump has received praise from oil executives for moves like suspending greenhouse gas reporting requirements for oil and gas companies until 2034 and relaxing reporting rules for methane leaks at oil and gas facilities.
But on paper, it doesn’t seem like the oil and gas industry is growing in the Permian.
The number of drilling rigs active in the Permian region was down to 251 as of Oct. 3, a decrease of 53 rigs from a year prior, according to Baker Hughes. But oil production in Texas is up from about 5.7 million barrels a day in July 2024 to about 5.8 million barrels in July 2025, according to EIA.
EIA forecast that U.S. oil production could stay around a record 13.6 million barrels a day in December. But that could start slipping as Brent oil prices are expected to drop to around $50 a barrel by early 2026, the agency said in its short-term energy outlook. Domestic production could ultimately rise in 2027 or 2028 thanks largely to increases in production in the Permian, according to a longer-term outlook from EIA that uses multiple oil-price scenarios.
More than half of oil and gas executives surveyed by the Dallas Fed in the third quarter said their business outlooks have worsened compared to one year ago. About half of the respondents to the Dallas Fed reported decreases in their levels of business activity compared to the third quarter of 2024.
The average price for a barrel of U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude fell from $75.74 in January to $63.96 in September. WTI, the U.S. oil benchmark, often trades slightly lower than Brent, which is the global benchmark. On Monday, WTI settled at less than $62 per barrel.
Despite those numbers, business is buzzing across the Permian.
Hotels across the region near capacity on weekdays, with a Best Western room with one king bed renting for more than $150 in tiny Pecos, Texas, for one night in early October. And nearly every booth at the Bennigan’s restaurant in Monahans, Texas, was full on a Friday night in late August.
Aaron Posselt, the Odessa store manager of Happy Windshield, said business is up year over year. His company replaces and repairs windshields for oil and gas trucks and fleets, as well as for personal vehicles — which can also fall victim to gravel kicked up by heavy oil industry trucks. He said about 80 percent of Happy Windshield’s business comes directly from oil field companies.
“We’ve seen an improvement on overall workload we’re getting compared to last year and the year before that. If you put it on a graph, the arrow is only going upward,” Posselt said recently. “I haven’t seen any downturn on the oil part.”
‘Financial preparation’
Signs of an oil downturn are also scarce in Fort Stockton.
The city sits at the southern edge of the Permian and doesn’t usually see as much oil activity as smaller towns closer to the New Mexico border, said Tanya Shuttleworth, who owns B’s Family Dining on Main Street with her husband.
But in 2016, after Trump was elected, that changed.
Shuttleworth said about a week before that election, a lot of the oil workers left town but then came back with a fervor after he was elected. Hotels, man camps and RV parks were overfilled, she said.
“They came back with a vengeance,” Shuttleworth said. “People were selling spots in their backyards so workers could park their RVs out back. They were so full up north the RVs came down here.”
That same crush of oil workers didn’t materialize after Trump was elected again in 2024, she said.
“The RV parks didn’t fill up this time,” Shuttleworth said. “I don’t know if some other place got all the people.”
Although the regional economy in the Permian is doing well, concern remains over the forecasts of oil production slowing and oil prices slumping. Harris with Midland Development said companies and local government agencies are making plans for how to react to a potential downturn.
“There’s financial preparation — being aware that revenues may decrease in the next few years — and then also just growing appetite for industry diversification,” Harris said.
Harris said regional leaders are hoping to create a growing logistics hub with two new interstates Congress designated that will run through Midland — Interstate 27 and Interstate 14. Midland Development is working to encourage aerospace and defense companies to set up shop in the region, and she expressed hope that data centers will come thanks to the area’s surplus production of natural gas that can be used for power generation.
Vistra Corp., for example, recently said it planned to more than triple the size of a gas-fired power plant in the Permian.
If the oil industry does go into a bust cycle, Posselt said Happy Windshield could pivot. During the Covid-19 downturn, when oil prices briefly dipped into negative territory, the company began making plastic partitions and sold them to retail businesses for social distancing.
“We’ll think outside the box,” Posselt said.
