Yes.  The year’s over.  There’s a lot of oil in the Gulf not there this time last year.  And fracking. Not Battlestar Galactica expletive frak, but the fracking used to deliver natural gas in wells in Texas, and may pollute water wells.  The EPA took over the TEQC air permitting program after a long game of legal chicken, and it’s not clear what will happen though this year supposedly is the hottest so far on record.

Yet the world’s economic pressures have come to play with the commodities of Texas. Demand from without Texas puts pressure on the supplies within Texas. Despite the glop of oil in the Gulf sea bottom, and the departure of much of the oil drilling in the Gulf, petroleum and natural gas assets of Texas are in great play. OPEC reportedly says the world can handle $100 barrel oil.  Gasoline prices hover at $3 a gallon.

The scramble for Texas energy assets will continue into this next year.  And yes, alternate energy infrastructure continues to rise in the state.  Wind farms continue to spread across West Texas and elsewhere despite bat mortality and Boone Pickens withdrawing his support.   Austin is one of the target markets for the Chevy Volt.  But the real story that no one notices is the amount of coal mined in Texas.  Texas is a coal mining state. Texas ranks third in the nation in coal-fired power production. Texas ranks at the top of carbon dioxide emissions. Thus, while most Texans don’t think of Texas as a mining state, it is.

 The cotton harvests are at records, and China’s desire for cotton is at a record.  China, of course, is scrambling to buy energy assets in Texas like the rest of the world, and Texas plants are buying manufacturing facilities in China.

Despite the promise of technologies in development in Texas and elsewhere (see, for example, the research on graphene in Austin), the substances underground, the crops on the ground and the wind blowing over the ground are what’s making life interesting in an economic recession.