Pumping more oil than the market could absorb left Texas scarred with rows of padlocked factories and flattened little towns that once thrived on the edge of the energy economy. Even after crude prices collapsed, the shale drilling that spurred the boom proved difficult to stop, adding to glut, intensifying the bust, and ultimately costing the state 100,000 energy jobs.

But the world’s oil producers have finally finished pumping excess amounts of crude, Saudi Arabia’s new energy minister Khalid Al-Falih said in a rare and exclusive interview with the Houston Chronicle on Tuesday night, declaring the end of global oil surplus and the beginning of a new chapter in the cyclical energy business.

“Supply and demand have come together,” Al-Falih said in his first newspaper interview since taking the most powerful job in the global energy industry last month. “The question now is how fast you will work off the global inventory overhang. We just have to wait for the second half of the year and next year to see how it works out.”

George Mitchell’s interests and successes were varied. He wanted to be an astrophysicist before deciding it didn’t pay enough. George Mitchell’s legacy: a shale revolution, a ‘revolutionary’ President Barack Obama, surrounded by members of Congress, signs an overhaul of toxic chemicals rules. “It means somewhere out there on the horizon, we can make our politics less toxic as well,” Obama said. Obama signs major overhaul of toxic chemicals rules into law Federal judge strikes down Obama’s hydraulic fracturing rule Khalid Al-Falih, Saudi Arabia’s new energy minister, says “supply and demand have come together,” but it will take months to use up the surplus oil stockpiles. Saudi energy minster says global oil glut is over A rendering of Republic Square, proposed for the Energy Corridor near Terry Hershey Park. In brief: Energy Corridor project is put off Developers of luxury units are optimistic

If Al-Falih’s assessment is right, the most painful period of the most painful oil-market crash since the 1980’s is over. Falling crude production in the United States, Nigeria, Venezuela and other countries has closed the gap between supply and demand, and the next eight months to a year could lay the groundwork for a market recovery as refineries start burning through millions of barrels of surplus oil poured into storage tanks as long as two years ago.

Until the inventory is reduced, crude prices likely will remain subdued. U.S. stockpiles have declined in recent weeks, including a 900,000-barrel drop last week, they but they remain near record levels – 530 million barrels, according to the Energy Department. Still, consuming all this oil may not be as daunting as it seems. Demand for gasoline has risen to record levels in the United States and oil consumption is on the rise in India and other parts of the world.

“We could be done with this in eight months,” said Praveen Kumar, executive director of the University of Houston’s Gutierrez Energy Management Institute.

Falih said he was confident that global energy demand would strengthen, noting that China is beginning to emerge from its economic doldrums and emerging economies in Southeast Asia have an increasing appetite for energy. He called the end of the global oil surplus two years and day after U.S. crude peaked at $107 a barrel.

“We are out of it,” he said.

Falih, a Texas A&M University graduate and former chief the national oil company Saudi Aramco, replaced the long-time Saudi oil policymaker Ali al-Naimi in May. He was in Houston this week to visit Saudi Aramco operations here and later joined in an evening meal to break the Ramadan fast at Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts. Falih also serves as chairman of Saudi Aramco, the company that produces one out of eight barrels of oil the world consumes every day.

The so-called shale revolution and the ensuing downturn in crude prices are two big reasons Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries have changed their approach to managing oil supplies. For OPEC, the surge in U.S. oil production proved shale drillers could respond quickly to high crude prices – “a game-changer,” Falih said.

As a result, Saudi Arabia has refused calls by other OPEC nations to resume its role as the world’s swing producer and cut its oil production in a bid to stabilize falling crude prices.

“The tools that OPEC has used in the past – targeting specific prices – have not always worked in the long term,” Falih said. “They create market dislocations that ultimately hurt producers and consumers.”

Instead, the Kingdom, a low-cost producer that can make profits even when prices are depressed, opted to let market forces weed out higher-cost rivals. U.S. oil production, driven by more expensive shale drilling, has dropped by more than 500,00 barrels a day since early 2015 and nearly 80 drillers have gone bankrupt.