According to Texas Monthly. https://www.texasmonthly.com/news/houston-not-prepared-oil-bust/ More at the link... What are yalls thoughts?
I'm at a refinery and still working during this pandemic so I hope that's not the case. But if the time was ever right to start the transition it would be now.
I have read or heard some version of this scenario for decades. Houston will be fine. There will be relative ups and downs but that is the case anywhere. The whole country is going to enter a recession.
The Saudi-Russia thing is kind of happening at the perfect time. The whole market is dislocated and demand is totally cratering, so let them fight it out now and then get on the same page in a few weeks. Better that than having two back-to-back crises. As far as the article, for now, the boom is over everywhere given that we're shutting down the world.
No it's all over - look for Pasadena to become the dominate city in Harris County and largest and most powerful city in Texas. Pasadena's natural beauty, status as tourist mecca and vast/diverse economy have had it positioned for this power grab for decades.
We've been transitioning away from O&G and towards renewables for a decade or more .... Hasn't hurt Houston at all. This will be a blip on the radar screen and we'll go back to the slow transition and other things will fill the void.
Downtown has like 5+ new sky scapers built within the last 3 years or about to come online. What will the tree huggers do with them? Amazes me how I only ever see a couple dozen workers on those sky scraper construction sites yet they still go up relatively quickly. Then I think about the great public and private works of the 20th century and the army of workers the employed.
Houston needs to focus on energy tech... and space. ALSO it should look at boosting its medical tech startups. PETRO is always needed but further diversification is needed.
So since 2017, I've been working with almost exclusively with Energy companies with at least one major Hub in Houston. What I've seen with every company I've worked with is that if they survived the downturn back in 2008, they've learned some survival skills as a business that'll help them through the next recession. Either they've consolidated their business with other environmental/energy companies, diversified themselves, or merged with more stable companies like your Haliburton's. It's obvious though that this administration isn't doing anything to incentivize investment into more clean energy transitions that make your mid sized engineering or heavy industrial manufacturing guys to start building into clean energy projects rather than working on refineries etc. I think that is very much needed at some point. Everyone talks about the Exxon's or the Shell's, but in reality Houston thrives from the mid sized guys who sub contract work from indirect channels. There are so many of these Pump, Piping, Tubing, or just engineering companies in the Houston O&G market that have the ability to adjust their businesses to clean energy on a dime. Especially the engineering firms. So I see Houston as ripe for a potential economic boom. The only question will be if our government and leading Energy corporations decide to invest further in green energy rather than continue to rely on dirty fossil fuels that allow for countries like Russia and Saudi Arabia to dictate our minute by minute fortunes.
Every city's boom is over. Trying to make this sound like a good thing, maybe this will alleviate some of the affordable housing crisis? If we stop hollowing out the world and stop concentrating everything in superstar cities it is probably better in the long run (assuming there is a long run).
Clear Lake City is going to de-annex from Houston and take all the space industry -- Lake will rise again!
