A lot of people know that if California was a separate country, that it would represent the fifth biggest economy in the world. Not that far behind, though, is Texas, which if it was a separate country would represent the ninth biggest economy in the world, making it thus bigger, all on its own, than entire nations such as Russia or Brazil. The most important industry in Texas is the oil and gas industry, of which, Texas from an oil perspective, represents 43% of the domestic oil production so produced in the United States, as we read at visualcapitalist.com. This would seem to indicate that when it comes to oil and gas, the perspective that Texas has, may indeed be at odds to all those that desire to steer away from non-renewal energy sources, as well as to all those that are especially concerned about climate change, pollution, and the like. Further complicating matters, is the fact that oil and gas, from an export perspective is quite beneficial to Texas, and hence to the United States, because oil and gas, most definitely represents very big business, and therefore is of real benefit for the United States export market, of which oil and gas, thus represents the highest percentage of those goods so being exported by America to the world, at large.
Not too surprisingly, based upon the industries that Texas is dominant in, this thus makes a big difference in regards to the policies that Texas so proposes and professes, and thereby the concentrated political power that it thus wields. This signifies that a successful politician in Texas is almost for a certainty going to be someone that is a proponent or at least at a minimum, a defender of the oil and gas industry, because to not be, would pretty much be political stupidity.
Additionally, while many an American desires to see lower gas and oil prices, so that their personal energy needs extract less from their respective paychecks – those that actually produce the gas and oil, are on the other hand, going to want to typically get as much as they can get from the marketplace. This thus creates the puzzling scenario, in which, America has for decades, castigated OPEC as being a market manipulator, as well as a cartel, which is gouging the world in regards to the profit markup and availability of that oil so being sold; but what is seldom mentioned is that America is actually the largest producer in the world of oil, but does not, itself, have a separate domestic market for that oil, in which that oil is thus priced at a rate substantially lower than OPEC, as a courtesy for its own people, so as to reduce the profits so made from that industry, upon its own people, domestically.
So then, what is good for Texas, may or may not be good for the nation as a whole – but make no mistake about it, Texas is incredibly important to the economy of America, most notably because of its oil and gas reserves; of which, it could be said, that if Texas, was to deliberately manipulate the oil market, so that, for instance, it produced less oil than it could produce, or restricted the domestic access to such, that this would in a sense, appear to then represent in form, a domestic version of OPEC.