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“Landman” star Andy Garcia joined top U.S. energy leaders, stakeholders and lawmakers in Washington this week, saying his work on the show offers a rare window into the dedication of oil workers and the complex process behind bringing U.S. energy to market.
Garcia’s show centers on the struggles of people working in the Permian Basin of West Texas, and his headlining of this week’s forum in Washington, D.C. brought the Trump-era theme of “American energy dominance” full circle to give the public a glimpse into that oft-underreported lifestyle.
Garcia told American Petroleum Institute president Mike Sommers during his keynote discussion that the American oil industry’s complexities, as they play out dramatized on the screen, are something that many people never see or think of.
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“You learn a lot about things that you wouldn’t necessarily just sort of take for granted,” he said.
“The reality of [how] the oil gets pumped out of the ground. And then, there’s a company that pumps it and then refines it, and that ends up being used in all these different varieties of things.”
He said viewers of “Landman” get an important window into the industry itself because of how closely showrunner Taylor Sheridan depicts that environment; and the way Billy Bob Thornton and Sam Elliott portray characters that seem true-to-life for those actually living and working on the oil patch.
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Garcia said he got “a deeper understanding and education about the industry itself and the use of petroleum and how it’s everywhere – everyday, everything we touch [has] there’s a byproduct of it, it seems.”
Garcia quipped he got “sucked in” to the energy industry’s depiction while watching the first season – for which he only starred in the finale – and after reading its scripts as he prepared for his own debut.
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Elsewhere, at the 2026 State of American Energy Forum sat exhibits depicting that path to American energy dominance, from a fabrication of the modest, but still-operating Venango County, Pennsylvania well where Edmund Drake first commercially extracted U.S. oil in 1859 to exhibits on how the U.S. now leads on the global stage.
In his opening address, Sommers said the “state of American energy is strong” overall going into 2026.
Sommers also directly addressed the historic events in Venezuela of the past weeks and how they directly affect American industry.
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He said that in 2007, the U.S. produced about 5 million barrels of oil a day, and relied heavily on imports – particularly from then-Hugo-Chavez-led Venezuela.
But, after the now-deceased dictator seized U.S. energy assets in Caracas, it not only affected the U.S. industry, but led to a two-decade decline that devastated Venezuela’s energy sector, which became overrun with corruption and broken livelihoods of the local people.
“We (in the U.S.) took a different path through competition and innovation. Our industry ushered in the shale revolution and propelled America to its status as the world’s energy superpower,” Sommers said.
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“The United States now produces 13 million barrels of oil every single day, more than any other country in the world. That production underpins America’s energy security and our economic strength.”
“No industry has done more to improve the human condition than the American oil and gas industry,” he later added.
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