Has Texas passed the Peak?

I have already described my arrival in Houston and it is now time to summarise two days in the heart of the oil state Texas. My conviction that one cannot survive here without a car has been strengthened. While driving around I discovered that, certainly, there is a tram line that runs from north to south through Downtown but the number of passengers that waited at the stations was usually fewer than the fingers on one hand. It might look different at rush hour but around lunch time there was hardly any activity.

On the way to the Museum of Fine Arts I passed the eastern part of Houston and, when I arrived, there was time to stroll around the area in which the Museum is situated. It will surprise no one if I mention that I was the only one actually walking around. What I saw was an area that had definitely seen busier days. There were empty shops and a number of large open areas that looked abandoned. There was no sign of any new constructions even though this should be an area that should be attractive. As an example I can mention that there was a gigantic facility for “Drive through banking” with 12 lanes and the capacity for at least 10 cars to queue in each. It now seemed that only one lane remained open and there was only one customer doing their banking with one car waiting its turn. Of course, the internet has taken over some of this activity but the scene set the tone. The fact that one cannot see construction cranes anywhere to indicate building activity – that there is no investment in new infrastructure – is a sign of stagnation.

After the remembrance ceremony I travelled around a little in Downtown and while there was clearly activity behind the glass facades of the buildings, there was no new construction. Even here there were empty shops and a noticeable feeling that the city was falling into a long slumber.

On my list of things to do was to travel to Texas City and look at all the oil refineries to be found there. There was no opportunity to enter the harbour area but the funnel on what was presumably a supertanker indicated that there was activity behind all the tanks. The USA’s dependence on imports is so great they must receive a new supertanker every 5 hours. The fact that Texas City is the USA’s sixth largest harbour indicates that shiploads of oil must arrive there every day. What will happen to Texas City when we have passed peak oil and more and more tankers voyage to China rather than the USA? Just as in Houston there was nothing in Texas City to show any investment in new construction. Instead, much of the installation seemed old and a little rusty.

Finally, I travelled to the coast and Galveston. The picture was the same there as in Houston and Texas City but in the centre of town they had renovated some of the old locales and there were activities typical of a tourist city. At a bar over a glass of beer one of the few customers described how Galveston had once been the capital city of Texas and how they were the first to get electricity etc. The opera house built in 1894 was mentioned with pride and many of the houses in the centre of the city seemed to date from Galveston’s golden age at the start of the 20th century. There is a wonderful beach in Galveston and the city will certainly survive as a tourist destination but the question is whether there will be enough gasoline for all the cars that need to travel there.

In California and Nevada many new cities sprang up in the wake of the gold rush and today some of those places are either ghost towns or tourist towns. The oil in Texas and off its coast has been the foundation for Texas’ greatness but a conclusion that I could draw from what I saw was that, for Texas, peak oil may have begun What is needed now is for Texas’ leadership to immediately begin to plan for the period “past peak oil”.

The next stop for me is Washington and the yearly ASPO-USA conference.

aleklett