More than a dozen top U.S. energy companies have pledged $100 million toward easing stresses on health care, education and civic infrastructure created by the shale oil and gas boom in West Texas and New Mexico, the group says.
Chevron, EOG Resources, ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell are among 17 companies backing the Permian Strategic Partnership, as the consortium is called, Don Evans, a former U.S. government official and energy executive helping launch the group, tells Reuters.
The group seeks to address labor and housing shortages, overtaxed health care and traffic congestion caused in part by companies descending on the Permian Basin, the nation’s largest oilfield, where they hope to pump billions of dollars’ worth of oil and gas in coming decades, experts say.
“It’s a significant amount of money, but these are huge challenges,” says Evans, a former U.S. Secretary of Commerce who lives in Midland, Texas, the epicenter of the shale oil revolution. “We don’t have enough teachers. We don’t have enough doctors.”
