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Montana 10th in Oil Reserves
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- Created on Wednesday, 18 April 2012 09:33
In a ranking of states in regard to the amount of proven oil reserves each has, Montana comes in at number 10. Montana was estimated to have 343 million barrels of reserve.
The on-line, 24/7 Wall St. did the analysis in weighing the impact that oil production has on a state's economy. The total of oil reserves in those ten states amounted to almost 15.5 billion barrels.
The top contender was, of course, Texas (with over 5 billion barrels), followed by Alaska, California, North Dakota (over 1 billion), New Mexico, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Utah, and Louisiana.
24/7 Wall St. stated, "As gas prices reach record highs across many parts of the country, Americans have been blaming oil companies. But as much as they are disliked, the oil and gas industry is also an indispensable part of many states and an asset to their local economies. ..While it is not necessarily the cause, the states with the most oil reserves generally have particularly strong economies. Six of the 10 states with the most reserves have among the lowest unemployment rates in the country; seven had the smallest increases in the unemployment rate from 2004 to 2010; and eight of the states had the largest increases in median household income from 2005 to 2010."
It was noted that Montana is tied for the 13th lowest unemployment rate at 6.5 percent and that 6.4 percent of the state's jobs are dependent upon the production of oil and gas. Montana has four refineries which is tied in 10th place for having the most refineries.
Some states have as much as a fourth of their jobs dependent upon the industry.
