oil & cotton

Oil and Cotton is a project in west Texas that covers about  230 miles (from Muleshoe south to Big Lake)  by 200  miles (from Sweetwater west to  Pecos) called the South Plains and Permian Basin. This area of Texas is roughly twice the size of the state of Connecticut. It is a semi-desert environment with an average rainfall of 15 inches. Summer highs often climb into the 100s and howling winds scrub the region throughout the year. 

Texas produces 1/3 of all cotton in the U.S. and is the largest oil producer in the country. Looking at satellite imagery of this area you will see a patch work of circles within squares scattered through out this land, these are the agricultural fields in this semi-desert made possible by center pivot irrigation systems. Intertwined and often over lapping in this patchwork are the circuitboard like grids of the oil fields that are irregularly scattered through the region. In 2018 Forbes reported that the Permian Basin was now the most productive oil field in the world surpassing Saudi Arabia’s Ghawar field. The area produces about 5 million barrels of oil per day and is project to be producing 8 million by 2023. 

There is a beautiful, poetic tragedy to this landscape. It’s a vast and desolate near waste land 100s of miles from the big cities where the cotton that we wear on our bodies and the oil that has created our societies is pulled from the earth. It’s a land that is the source of our riches and probably a signal of our demise.