Texas Hit Hard By Shale Slowdown
Texas’ economy is perhaps the most vulnerable to oil price swings given its leading role in the country’s oil industry. Recently, as prices have remained low, talk has begun about the outlook for the state’s economy.
According to a recent Reuters report, for example, smaller independent oil and gas producers in the Lone Star State are struggling to get loans from banks as the latter become increasingly wary of the ability of the borrowers to return the money when the time comes.
Jobs in the Texas oil and gas industry are falling, too. The Houston Business Journal reported this month that September saw a 1,100 decline in the number of jobs in the mining and logging sector—the category that includes oil and gas jobs. Over the 12 months from September 2018, the state’s oil and gas industry added just 1,700 new jobs, which was the lowest number of new job additions to any Texas industry over the same period, data from the Texas Workforce Commission showed.
Yet not everyone is worried. The University of Houston Energy Fellows, for instance, wrote in an article for Forbes that “the alarm bells are premature.” While the experts that make up the group acknowledge there are plenty of reasons to be worried about the economy of Houston—the article focuses on the city—oil prices are not among them.
The trade war with China and the anticipation of a global economic slowdown caused by it is a top concern for any economy and Houston is no exception. Political economic problems in Europe are also a cause for worry. Yet, according to the University of Houston Energy Fellows, bankruptcies in the Houston oil and gas industry are only slightly higher this year than last, and the credit crunch energy independents are facing now is “far from comparable to 2015-16.”
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