[austlar1]

Thought this might be the right place to solicit opinions about the risk that the crash in oil prices might have some kind of negative impact on development projects in Texas. It seems obvious that the building boom in Houston (and possibly DFW) will be impacted. What about Austin? Most financial analysts are predicting a very hard time for Texas energy producers, especially those involved in expensive fracking and shale oil extraction. This will also effect the institutions that loan money to this sector of the economy as well as a lot of wage earners in Texas. Is development in Austin insulated from this situation. It appears that OPEC is waging a price war against the new suppliers of expensive US fracked petroleum products. This could go on for quite a while. I think it is kind of scary since so much of the growth in the US economy has been in the energy producing states like Texas.