{"id":10185,"date":"2012-05-14T06:00:34","date_gmt":"2012-05-14T11:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=10185"},"modified":"2012-05-15T11:00:12","modified_gmt":"2012-05-15T16:00:12","slug":"goldilocks-and-the-price-of-oil-in-texas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2012\/05\/14\/goldilocks-and-the-price-of-oil-in-texas\/","title":{"rendered":"As Prices Fall, Finding a Sweet Spot for Oil in Texas"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Dave Fehling\/StateImpact Texas<\/p>

Deep in the Heart of Texas Oil: an Italian restaurant has pulse of industry<\/p><\/div>\n

Barbie Lomonte works in a part of Houston that has one of its biggest concentrations of oil and gas companies. She knows a lot about the industry and what the price for a barrel of oil means to it.<\/p>\n

“Business has been wonderful, oil and gas are doing well and I have nothing to complain about,” said Lamonte as her employees bustled around her, filling orders.<\/p>\n

She herself isn’t an oil trader nor does her company do any drilling. But it does use lots of oil. But of the olive variety, not Texas tea.\u00a0She owns Lomonte’s Italian Restaurant.<\/p>\n

“We’re right in the middle of the Energy Corridor,” said Lomonte.<\/p>\n

The Energy Corridor<\/a> is what the locals call a strip along Interstate 10 that runs west out of Houston. From Lomonte’s\u00a0restaurant, you can drive less than two miles and pass the headquarters of ConocoPhillips, BP America and CITGO. At lunch time, a shuttle bus brings geologists, oil engineers, and accountants by the dozens to Lomonte’s and several other eateries clustered under big live oaks.<\/p>\n

Lomonte has run the restaurant for over two decades and has shared the roller-coaster ride that is the oil business in Texas.<\/p>\n

“The worse was, unfortunately, the spill in the Gulf. That was painful for all of us,” Lomonte said of the Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010.<\/p>\n

Over the years, Lomonte said she has seen the demeanor of her clients dim and brighten with the price per barrel: hunkering down and spending less on wine when oil prices fell and splurging when prices reached where they’ve been this year: around $100 a barrel.<\/p>\n

“When it’s good, they’re celebrating more,” said Lomonte.<\/p>\n

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