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To Texans who have come of age during the current fracking boom, the delirious and then devastating years of the late seventies and early eighties should be instructive. The good times—well, for Texas producers—began with the OPEC oil embargo of 1973 and the Iranian Revolution of 1979, which tied up the supply of imported oil in the U.S. Drivers were forced to line up for hours at the gas pump, and home heating prices skyrocketed, spurring President Jimmy Carter to deregulate the price of American oil. The result: drillers now had big incentives to, literally, go back to the well. Demand was high, which meant that, for a time at least, prices followed. Between 1979 and 1981, the number of rigs in production in the…

The post The Oil Boom That Went Bust appeared first on Texas Monthly.

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