Blowout

This chapter focuses on the power dynamics of the oil and gas industry in Oklahoma, and how the citizens of the state were caught in the middle of Big Oil and Gas’s interests. Maddow chronicles the 2014 legislative proposal, pushed onto the ballot by the major oil players in the state—Devon, Chesapeake, and Continental—which would give every driller in the state a major tax break. When the bill passed with considerable margins, the tax break was made permanent, at the expense of tornado shelters in public schools. Oklahomans had grown so accustomed to the realities and implications of the oil and gas industry that they had become dependent on its whims. As Maddow puts it, “The story of oil and gas in Oklahoma is pretty much the story of modern Oklahoma. […] Oil was discovered in Oklahoma long before it was a state and still trumps government and governance” (263). The state’s identity is fundamentally intertwined with the machinations of Big Oil, and it cannot fathom a life without its primary industry. Thousands of families receive royalty checks from oil and gas drillers on a regular basis, which left countless other families across the state hoping that somehow their land would also yield a lifetime of checks for their mineral rights.