On one hand, you’ve got an old-fashioned oil boom that’s bringing with it plenty of prosperity to local communities on or near the Eagle Ford Shale. One man, for instance, is bringing in roughly $10,000 per month charging 17 men $150 each in rent per week.
On the other, you’ve got rural Texas roads that aren’t equipped to handle the type of heavy truck traffic going to and from the Eagle Ford Shale drilling rigs. In turn, this is contributing to truck accidents.
One Dimmitt County judge said the roads are in “bad shape,” as Vicki Vaughan reports for the San Antonio Express-News, but that the oil and gas companies were collaborating with the county in an effort to find a way to fund road repair and maintenance.
Modern-day oil booms are similar to those in the past. One word comes to mind: haphazard. People come to where the good pay and opportunity is, like 12 Eagle Ford Shale workers who sleep in one local resident’s shower-equipped garage.
In other areas, oil and gas workers sleep in tents.