Texas churned out 1.7 billion barrels of oil in 2021, by far the most of any state in the U.S.
But a widely viewed Facebook post claims Texas was at one point in time the world’s largest oil producer, outperforming even oil-rich Saudi Arabia.
“On this day, in 2018 Texas was the largest oil producer in the world, surpassing Saudi Arabia,” reads the Oct. 5 post, which was shared more than 4,500 times in six days.
But the claim is false for a few reasons.
Texas produced about 1.6 billion barrels of oil in 2018, according to The Railroad Commission of Texas, which is the state agency that oversees the oil and natural gas industry. Saudi Arabia, though, produced more than twice that, turning out more than 3.7 billion barrels for the year.
The U.S. as a whole – not Texas alone – became the world’s largest oil producer in 2018, outproducing Russia and Saudi Arabia. The U.S. still holds the top spot and accounted for 14.5% of crude oil production worldwide last year, compared to 13.1% for Russia and 12.1% for Saudi Arabia, according to data from the Energy Information Administration.
USA TODAY reached out to the user who shared the post for comment.
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By any measure, Texas was not the "largest oil producer in the world" in 2018, as the claim states.
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