Oil production in the US state of Texas, the largest oil producer of the nation, hit a record high in September 2013, according to new data released on Tuesday.
The Lone Star State pumped 2.7 million barrels of crude oil per day during September, about 35 percent of the United States' crude in the month and the highest monthly average since at least January 1981, according to local media Fuelfix.
For 25 straight months, the state's oil production has increased at an annual rate of more than 25 percent, economist Mark J. Perry told Fuelfix.
The recent growth largely has been fueled by oil production in South Texas' Eagle Ford Shale and West Texas' Permian Basin, which have expanded rapidly to produce more than 1 million barrels of oil per day each, placing them among nine "super-giant oilfields" in the world, Perry said.
According to the Energy Information Administration, the current pace of annual increase in Texas indicates that production could surpass 3 million barrels per day by early 2014 and reach 4 millon barrels per day by 2015.
Texas' oil production peaked in 1972, when it produced an average of 3.4 million barrels per day. The state's oil production had been declining since the US Energy Information Administration's monthly record-keeping began in 1981. But the tide abruptly turned in 2008 with the beginning of the shale oil and gas boom.
