Texas County In The Middle Of Nowhere Now Nation's Richest Thanks To Oil, Gas

AUSTIN, TX — The nation's richest county isn't where you might think. It's not in Wyoming, where the wealthy Jackson Hole enclave is located, nor is it Connecticut, an extension of metro New York City. No, the richest is McMullen County in the heart of the oil-and-gas-rich Eagle Ford shale formation south of San Antonio.

That's according to Time magazine, which compiled the most recent 2015 data available from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), which collects IRS data. Time notes that a decade ago, rankings of the richest counties in the country were easily predicted using adjusted gross income data yielding perennial entrants to the Top 5 club.

But as of 2015, only one of those traditionally making the Top 5 richest counties list still remains, Teton Couny with an average adjusted gross income of $248,949. Then came the Eagle Ford play, yielding not one, but two, Texas counties on the most recent compilation.

According to TRAC data, McMullen County, Texas, now boasts the highest average adjusted gross income in the nation at $303,717. Fourth-ranked is Glasscock County situated in the productive Permian Basin in West Texas, yielding not only minerals but an average adjusted gross income of $181,375, the nation's fourth-highest.

Among the Top 10 is La Salle County, neighboring McMullen County to the southwest of San Antonio, tallying an average adjusted gross income of $146,991.

The Texas showing on the most recent list is made more remarkable given that in 2005, no Texas county was ranked among the top 30 most wealthy in the U.S., Time magazine notes.

But that was before the Eagle Ford play came about, resulting in a tectonic shift in terms of the nation's richest regions list makeup.

It's easy to see why. In 2011, oil reserves at the sedimentary rock formation were estimated at 3 billion barrels. Another 50.2 trillion cubic feet of recoverable gas were estimated to lie under the surface, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

In the first six months of 2013, the Eagle Ford produced 2.69 billion cubic feet of gas and 599,000 barrels of oil and condensate per day—the oil production representing an increase of 51 percent over the previous year's average. By the end of '13, production exploded to 1 million barrels per day, extended to 24 counties in Texas.

Indeed, as Bloomberg News noted, its shale, not stock, that has fueled McMullen County's rise.

"I joke that oil and gas finally made ranching profitable," Thomas Tunstall, research director for the Institute for Economic Development at the University of Texas at San Antonio, told Bloomberg. "A lot of old Texas families live on large ranches in McMullen County, and the older generation went through tough times prior to five years ago."

Things have calmed down considerably in the region of the Eagle Ford shale, where once sleep Texas towns became bustling activity hubs with new construction—retail stores, hotels, apartments and the like—to accommodate new residents feverishly coaxing valuable minerals under the earth's surface.

In fact, by the summer of 2016, Eagle Ford spending had dropped by two thirds from $30 million in 2014 to $10 million, according to an analysis by the research firm Wood Mackenzie. In the wake of that oil bust, those frenzied explorers have since dwindled in number and those once-sleep towns abounding with new construction suddenly find themselves with a housing glut now that activity has slowed.

One sees the effects of the decline in crude oil prices from 2015 across the terrain. In January 2015, there were 840 drilling rigs throughout the state but declined to 321 by year's end. In the Eagle Ford shale region, the decline in the same 12-month period was from 200 to 76 rigs.

But people got rich, that's for sure. People got super rich, in fact, as illustrated by the reconfigured list of nation's wealthiest counties. The Top 5 richest counties in the U.S. are now:

• McMullen County, Texas
• Teton County, Wyo.
• New York County, N.Y.
• Glasscock County, Texas
• Marin County, Calif.

Eagle Ford shale, you came in like a wrecking ball, and we hardly knew ye. But it was fun while it lasted and—for those capitalizing on the find—extraordinarily lucrative.

>>> Read the full story at Time magazine

Photo credit: John Campbell via WikiMedia Commons