All 80 employees of their company, Premier Energy Services, are Hispanic, reflecting a shift that has slowly transformed Texas’ oil-rich western expanse. Where a roughneck — the grease-stained symbol of Texas’ economic identity — was once typically a white man hoping to strike black gold, the average oil field worker is now a Hispanic man who was born in Texas. “Growing up, my dad used to take me to work in the oil fields. It was a white man’s industry,” said a foreman, Alfredo Ramirez, 31, a third-generation Mexican American. “Today it is us Latinos.”Mark Matta, a city councilman in Odessa, chuckled as he described a television series about a Texas oil rig in which most of the workers were white.

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Persons: —, ”, Alfredo Ramirez, ” Mark Matta Organizations: Premier Energy Services, “ Locations: West Texas, Odessa, Texas, chuckled