Oklahoma's energy consumption
Oklahoma's energy consumption is deeply intertwined with its history and economic development, primarily driven by the extraction of oil, natural gas, and wind energy. The state has long been recognized for its significant petroleum reservoirs, having been the largest oil-producing region globally in the early twentieth century. Today, despite the depletion of traditional oil reserves, Oklahoma remains a prominent player in crude oil production, ranking sixth in the United States as of 2023, primarily due to advancements in hydraulic fracturing. Natural gas, once considered a waste byproduct of oil drilling, has become a valuable resource, contributing to Oklahoma's substantial energy portfolio.
Electricity generation in Oklahoma relies heavily on natural gas, with historical reliance on coal decreasing dramatically in recent years. The state has also harnessed its abundant wind resources, with wind energy constituting about 42% of its electrical power generation by 2022, making Oklahoma the second-highest wind energy producer in the nation. Agriculture plays a role in energy production through the potential for biofuels, as the state cultivates crops like corn for ethanol. With a growing population and increasing energy demands, the future of Oklahoma's energy landscape will be shaped by the balance between traditional energy sources and the transition to renewable energy, reflecting broader global challenges around sustainability and resource management.
Oklahoma's energy consumption
Summary: The history of Oklahoma epitomizes the close relationship between society and energy resources. Much of Oklahoma’s social and economic organization focused on energy extraction from oil, natural gas, and wind.
The biophysical environment within the boundaries of the state of Oklahoma offers varied and plentiful energy sources. Since the turn of the twentieth century, much of the social and economic organization of the state has been focused on energy extraction from oil, natural gas, and wind. Providing energy for the industrialized world has created fortunes, created jobs, generated tax revenues, and spawned legal systems for wealth distribution. The abundance of energy sources has fostered the development of residential living in suburban and rural locations dispersed over wide geographic areas. Accessible energy has an impact on all aspects of human activity, from agriculture to social activities to migrations of populations. The supply and demand for energy has accordingly shaped the historic social and economic character of Oklahoma and will continue to do so in the future.
The energy resources of Oklahoma historically have been among the most abundant and accessible in the United States. In this regard, Oklahoma is best known for its petroleum reservoirs; the state overlies vast geological formations that still contain large volumes of natural gas and oil.
Oil
The indigenous inhabitants of the Oklahoma lands were aware of seeps of oil but did not use the crude oil as an energy source. These peoples valued oil for various purposes, including medical treatment. In 1859, a resident in the northwestern part of the state drilled for saltwater but instead found unexpected oil. During this time, small amounts of oil were typically sold for household purposes, such as lamp fuel. As oil uses and value expanded, a resident in what is now known as Rogers County drilled a well in 1889 to find oil for topical application on cattle for parasite control. A successful venture, this resulted in a well said to produce a half barrel per day. A few years later, in 1897, a major oil find in Washington County started a century of extensive oil exploration, production, and processing. Within the following decade, Oklahoma became the largest oil-producing region in the world, providing energy that fueled early twentieth-century industrialization.
Opportunities created by the boom spurred immigration. By 1927, producers in the state reached a peak of 278 million barrels of oil. To process the crude oil, investors built refineries throughout the state. During this time, Oklahoma established its place in the history of energy. Petroleum became the fuel of war, industrialization, and automobile-based lifestyles. This inexpensive fuel powered mechanized agriculture. While not recognized at the time, oil also fueled unsustainable farming practices that resulted in the 1930s Dust Bowl. Today, despite much of Oklahoma's conventional petroleum reserves having been depleted, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) still ranked Oklahoma sixth in US crude oil production in 2023, thanks to hydraulically fractured ("fracked") oil.
Natural Gas
One by-product of oil extraction is natural gas. Natural gas is a form of hydrocarbon energy that can be isolated and found alone, but it is also a constituent of oil and saltwater found in geological formations throughout Oklahoma. In the early days of oil exploration, the industry considered gas a waste product, and it was burned off at the well site. Gas is now recognized as a valuable product, with producers going to great lengths to extract it. One of the deepest producing wells in the world is in Oklahoma, located in Beckham County in the southwestern part of the state, at a depth of 31,411 feet. The peak production was in 2015, with extractions of nearly 2.5 trillion cubic feet of gas. Overall, as of 2022, geological formations in Oklahoma contained approximately 6.7 percent of the natural gas in the United States, according to EIA projections.
Electricity
Oklahoma’s electrical energy comes from a variety of sources, and because of its local abundance, natural gas is a primary fuel source for electricity. With the electrification of the United States in the early twentieth century, electrical power became available in large urban areas. Because of the wide dispersion of customers, the distribution of electrical power to rural areas was not profitable. As a result, much of rural Oklahoma was without electricity until the 1930s. As part of the federal government’s response to rural needs, the Rural Electrification Administration was created in 1935 and made loans to customer-owned electric cooperatives. Cooperatives formed across the state and supported the erection of electrical facilities serving rural areas. Oklahoma’s state legislature created the Grand River Dam Authority (GRDA), which used federal money to build a hydroelectric dam in far northeastern Oklahoma. To this day, this agency is one of the few electrical power providers in the United States owned by a state government.
Federally built reservoirs were constructed from the 1940s through the 1960s and now provide relatively cheap hydroelectric energy for publicly owned utilities. In 2001, coal fueled about 63 percent of the utility-scale net electrical generation in Oklahoma, but that figure decline to 6 percent in 2023. Both for-profit and public-owned utilities have coal-fired electrical generation facilities in the state. Coal is railed into the state from large deposits in the northwestern part of the United States (primarily Wyoming). Although coal is still mined within state boundaries, little is used because of its large sulfur content and associated air quality issues.
Folklorists, songwriters, and meteorologists have long recognized the Oklahoma wind. Situated on the eastern edge of the U.S. Great Plains, Oklahoma experiences an ever-present wind. In the early twentieth century, Oklahomans used wind to pump groundwater for irrigation and watering livestock. In areas off the early electrical power grid, homesteaders used small wind-powered generators to produce electricity for domestic use and for agriculture. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, demand for renewable and less polluting sources of energy increased dramatically. Between the late 1970s and 2000, the unit cost of producing wind energy dropped eightfold, making wind commercially viable on a large scale. Supported by state and federal government incentives, private investors found profit in the construction and operation of large wind farms in western Oklahoma. Tribal nations in Oklahoma also became involved in wind energy projects. The term wind farm refers to dedicated land with a concentration of anywhere from twenty to eighty-four turbine towers equipped with three 250-foot-long blades designed to capture wind energy. According to EIA figures, by 2022, Oklahoma wind farms had the capacity to generate about 42 percent of the electrical power for the state; the state was the second-highest wind energy producer in the country, with only Texas generating more.
Agriculture, Biomass, and Organic Energy
As part of the search for alternative fuels, government entities and private investors turned their focus to the use of agricultural products and by-products for viable sources of energy. With abundant productive farmland, the state’s agricultural sector is an expanding part of meeting energy demands. Society has long used grains to produce ethanol for various uses, including as fuel. Corn, which grows well in Oklahoma, is a source of biomass for ethanol production. Biomass, the organic by-products of agricultural and forestry products, is also a potential source for other organically based fuels. Although biofuels are not currently a primary energy source in the state, they may play an important role in the future to meet the state’s fuel demands.
Energy Consumption and Prospects
With a population of 4.1 million people (as of the 2023 census estimate), Oklahoma ranked twenty-eighth among the fifty states. Located in the southwestern part of the continental United States, Oklahoma sustains hot summers that create a high demand for electricity to power air-conditioning. The availability of land and inexpensive gasoline has fostered urban sprawl and a private automobile–based demand for gasoline. Petroleum refining and processing, electrical power generation, and manufacturing create the primary industrial demand for energy in Oklahoma. Oklahomans ranked eleventh in the United States in per-capita energy consumption: 380 million British thermal units (Btu) per person in 2022, according to the EIA.
As in other parts of the United States, demand for energy will continue to increase. Population growth, innovation and proliferation of energy-consuming products, and continued urban sprawl will generate more demand for all sources of energy.
In the future, the various sources of energy in Oklahoma will be a factor in meeting demands for power in the United States. The production of petroleum, coal, hydropower, wind power, fossil fuel–generated electricity, and biofuels will continue to be an essential part of the state’s economic and social organization. The depletion of sources of energy and environmental consequences of using them will create new challenges not only for the people within the state but also for people globally. Just as the historic production of energy was the genesis of what Oklahoma is today, future production will determine the economic and social character of the state.
Bibliography
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“Fiscal Year 2022 Annual Report.” Oklahoma Corporation Commission, 2023, oklahoma.gov/content/dam/ok/en/occ/documents/ajls/about/annual-report-2022-fiscal-year-2022.pdf. Accessed 8 Aug. 2024.
"Oklahoma." US Energy Information Administration, 18 July 2024, www.eia.gov/state/?sid=OK. Accessed 8 Aug. 2024.
“Renewable Energy.” Oklahoma Commerce, 2024, www.okcommerce.gov/doing-business/business-relocation-expansion/industry-sectors/renewable-energy/. Accessed 8 Aug. 2024.