What happened: The Railroad Commission of Texas (RRC) released its preliminary May oil and gas production report, with Midland County ranking No. 2 statewide in both crude oil and natural gas production.

Texas operators reported producing 129.5 million barrels of crude oil in May, averaging about 4.18 million barrels per day. Martin County ranked No. 1 with 21.1 million barrels, or 16.3% of the statewide total, followed by Midland County with 18.9 million barrels, or 14.6%.

Midland County also ranked No. 2 in natural gas, producing 89.1 million mcf, or about 8.3% of Texas’ reported total. The statewide figures came from production reported by 156,120 oil wells and 84,661 gas wells.

Why it matters: Oil and gas production is the economic lifeblood of Midland, and the latest numbers show just how much of Texas’ oil production concentrates here. Martin County, which includes a small portion of northeast Midland, and Midland County combined produced about 40 million barrels of crude oil in May, or 30.9% of all crude oil reported statewide.

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Put another way, nearly one out of every three barrels of Texas crude oil reported to the RRC in May came from Midland and Martin counties. production. This is why so much focus is on our area, and energy will remain the dominant force in Midland for years to come.

Go deeper: The scale is significant nationally, too, although the state and federal numbers aren’t directly comparable. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates that the United States produced about 13.7 million barrels of crude oil per day in May. Midland and Martin counties reported the equivalent of about 1.29 million barrels per day. That is roughly 9.4% of total U.S. daily crude oil production in May.

It is worth noting that the EIA specifically cautions that its state estimates typically differ from production reported by state agencies, and that the RRC says its May numbers are preliminary and it will update them as operators submit late or corrected production reports.