List of cities most influenced by the Energy industry

[Pete]

The population estimates for 2014 are set to come out very soon and I wanted to do an analysis of OKC vs. other cities that have been heavily influenced by the energy industry.

I'd like to include those MSA's which are impacted even where energy might not be the overall driving economic force. Places like Austin and even Charlotte come to mind.


Here is my list (please feel free to comment about any/all) and please add others:

Oklahoma City
Tulsa
Dallas / Fort Worth
Houston
Denver
Midland / Odessa
Austin?
Charlotte?
Salt Lake City?

What about the Dakotas, Pennsylvania and other areas?

[adaniel]

Your top 5 are solid. I would add New Orleans and Pittsburgh (Marcellus Shale) as well.

I'm not sure I would include Austin. The only office there I can think is a fairly large office for Statoil, but no major HQ's or ops that I would know of. SLC seems a bit shaky since a lot of the western slope stuff flamed out 20-30 years ago. Charlotte has a lot of utility companies but I can't see how its benefited from the most recent oil/gas boom. On the flip side, San Antonio has two sizable refiners (Valero and Tesoro) and is the de facto base for the Eagle Ford Shale.

I don't know if you are just looking at big cities; Williston ND is the hub for the Bakken Shale area while Casper WY is the same for the Powder River Basin.

[Just the facts]

New Orleans

[Just the facts]

If look at coal, you can add the entire state of West Virginia, half of Kentucky, and Cincinnati.

[Pete]

Should of said that I'm just concerned with oil & gas.

What I want to look at is the correlation between population growth and oil prices.

Then, I want to compare the growth of cities that have been most heavily influenced by oil.


My initial analysis of OKC is pretty interesting...

The OKC MSA has grown 11-15% in every decade since 1970 (still trying to dig up numbers for earlier decades, but I suspect they are similar).

Even with the crash of the mid to late 80's, the population still grew 11% (although it was way up early in that decade and then we actually had a negative growth for a few years later).

And even though the '90's are often portrayed as the Dark Ages, we still grew at 12.8%, while in the Roaring '00's, we grew at 14.3%. Thus far in the '10's, we are on about a 15% pace but the 2014 numbers (to be released this month) may bring that down a bit and you would expect the numbers to soften for the next couple of years at least.


Just trying to put some real numbers together in terms of our historical growth and then compare that to oil prices, growth of other MSA's that benefit from a robust oil market, growth of other MSA's in general, and growth against the U.S. population trends.

Want to look at this in a purely objective statistical manner.

[Chicken In The Rough]

I think Austin has enough energy-related businesses to make the list. I would also include New Orleans and Pittsburgh. You might also consider Bakersfield and/or Fresno. These cities lead California's oil & gas sector.

I would also include Casper, WY and Williston, ND under micropolitan areas. But I would nix Charlotte.

[bradh]

Anchorage?

[tfvc.org]

If look at coal, you can add the entire state of West Virginia, half of Kentucky, and Cincinnati.

I think currently Wyoming is a bigger player of coal than WV and Ky, those states are running dry.

I know Tampa has a big oil facility in it's port area that probably fuels most of Florida but with tourism being a big player I am sure it isn't considered a major influence in it's economy.

[Pete]

But I would nix Charlotte.

I thought of them because of Duke Energy but then realized they are an electricity company, not O&G.

[gopokes88]

I disagree with Austin. You'll run into the correlation does not equal causation problem. Austin has 3 MASSIVE economic drivers that have little to do with O&G directly-UT Austin, the State government, and technology. Tourism is a big contributor as well. Austin might be booming but it has little to do with O&G and more to do with Austin being a cool city that people are flocking too.

SXSW injected $315.3 million last year and is growing every single year.
http://sxsw.com/sites/default/files/...20Analysis.pdf

ACL generated $102 million in 2012. You can bet that number has grown.
Austin City Limits Festival 2013 - Community Impact Newspaper

In fact "Natural Resources" only makes up 3.1% of Austin's economy.
The Economy : Business Climate : Site Selection : The Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce

The largest employers in Austin doesn't include a single energy company.
"Austin's largest employers include the Austin Independent School District, the City of Austin, Dell, the U.S. Federal Government, Freescale Semiconductor (spun off from Motorola in 2004), IBM, St. David's Healthcare Partnership, Seton Family of Hospitals, the State of Texas, the Texas State University, and the University of Texas at Austin.[84] Other high-tech companies with operations in Austin include 3M, Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Google, Qualcomm, Inc., AMD, Applied Materials, Cirrus Logic, ARM Holdings, Cisco Systems, Electronic Arts, Flextronics, Facebook, eBay/PayPal, Bioware, Blizzard Entertainment, Hoover's, Intel Corporation, National Instruments, Nvidia, Rackspace, RetailMeNot, Rooster Teeth, Spansion, Troux Technologies, Buffalo Technology, Silicon Laboratories, Xerox, Oracle, Hostgator, Samsung Group, HomeAway, and United Devices."
Austin, Texas - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Point is, if we're going on pure statistics, Austin's economy is way too diverse to be able to claim O&G prices have a significant effect on their economy. Correlation doesn't equal causation.

[bchris02]

Charlotte has been attempting to recruit more energy-sector jobs but they don't have a huge presence. Their second tallest tower is the "Duke Energy Tower" but that is only the local power company and is only named for Duke Energy because Wachovia, the bank the tower was built for, went belly up in the financial crisis.

[Pete]

I disagree with Austin. You'll run into the correlation does not equal causation problem. Austin has 3 MASSIVE economic drivers that have little to do with O&G directly-UT Austin, the State government, and technology. Tourism is a big contributor as well. Austin might be booming but it has little to do with O&G and more to do with Austin being a cool city that people are flocking too.

This is all true but it doesn't really matter anyway because their growth numbers are so massive they are in their own class for the last 20 years or so.

[Just the facts]

Pete, I don't know if you are going to be able to do what you are attempting. There are way too many variables ranging from illegal aliens to urban migration trends to Hurricane Katrina refugees to annexation. Then you would have to use a control group of other non-oil cities to see if the trends were wide spread. At the end of the day all you would have is a list of inflation adjusted oil prices and population - with no way to link them

[PhiAlpha]

All that have been mentioned are good except maybe Charlotte. There are some smaller cities mixed in, but you could add (in no particular order):

Bakersfield, CA (California O&G HQ, someone mentioned this, but this one definitely should be included)
Farmington, NM (San Juan Basin)
Roswell/Artesia, NM (Permian Basin)
Sante Fe, NM (San Juan & Raton Basins, as well as state and federal O&G groups)
Minot, ND (Bakken)
Williston, ND (Saw this mentioned and definitely important if you use small cities)
Tyler, TX (General HQ for most East Texas O&G operations)
Amarillo, TX (West Anadarko Basin and general TX Panhandle)
Beaumont, TX (East TX)
San Antonio, TX (Eagleford Shale)
Wichita, KS (General Kansas operations)
Evansville, IN (Illinois Basin)
Shreveport, LA (Haynesville Shale, general Louisiana)
Baton Rouge, LA (Gull of Mexico, general Louisiana)
Lafayette, LA (Gulf of Mexico, general Louisiana)
Cheyenne, WY (General Wyoming, Green River Basin, Niobrara)
Casper, WY (General Wyoming, Salt Creek Field, Coal Bed Methane, Green River Basin, Powder River Basin)
Gillette, WY (Powder River Basin, Niobrara, Coal Bed Methane)
Salt Lake City, UT (Unita Basin, general Eastern Utah)
Los Angeles, CA (though there is so much going on there that the impact of slumping oil prices would be hard to quantify)
Fort Smith, AR (Fayetteville Shale)
Anchorage, AK (Saw this mentioned as well, but worth adding)
Fairbanks, AK
Billings, MT (Bakken, Northern Wyoming, general Montana)

If you want to add Canadian cities:
Calgary, AB
Edmonton, AB

[Pete]

^

Thanks, that's very helpful. And the Canadian cities are great points of comparison.

I'm not looking so much for definitive answers, just general trends.


My preliminary research seems to indicate:
1. The OKC MSA grows at a rate between 11-15% per decade over the last 50 to 60 years,
2. That the variance between that range is closely correlated to the price of oil (when it's low, our growth is closer to 10% and when it's high, the rate is closer to 15%).
4. OKC has grown at a slower rate during the current oil boom than most other oil-related MSA's.
5. Since the decline in the U.S. industrial base and the resulting population shift to the 'Sunbelt', OKC has grown at a slower rate over the last several decades than most MSA's to the west, south, southwest and southeast.
6. For all the talk and patting ourselves on the back surrounding MAPS and economic development since 1990, that does not seem to have had a profound affect on population growth rates.

[adaniel]

I appreciate what your trying to do here but I think you are going to find there are so many variables its going to be difficult to establish any sort of correlation.

First, are you looking at components of growth? Internal migration vs international migration? Until recently OK was not a big magnet for international migrants. What about the national growth rate? The nation as a whole has slowed way down, the median metro growth is only around 0.8%/yr this decade. What about other economic events? OKC grew quite a bit in the early to mid 90's thanks to big time transfers to Tinker even though oil prices were quite low during that time . You could rack your brain thinking about all the variables that have affected the city and nation as a whole.

Also, I've never considered OK to be part of the "sunbelt" despite some interest group's best tries to do so. And a quick internet search would reveal the same. OKC and OK in general are still very much influenced by trends found in the Great Plains region.

[bchris02]

Also, I've never considered OK to be part of the "sunbelt" despite some interest group's best tries to do so. And a quick internet search would reveal the same. OKC and OK in general are still very much influenced by trends found in the Great Plains region.

What cities are in the "great plains region"? Kansas City and Omaha are usually thrown in with the Midwest and Denver with the Western United States. The major Texas cities are very much considered Sunbelt and OKC and Tulsa are closely tied to Texas economically and culturally. Therefore, I would consider Oklahoma to be the Sunbelt.

I do agree though there are many variables affecting the city's growth. Overall though, I think the growth can mostly be contributed to the low cost of being a homeowner here compared to the average salary. There are few other places that are in any way desirable that you can get as much house for your money as you can here. Also, when oil is up, companies like Chesapeake and Devon offer lucrative relocation packages to bring people here.

OKC is not "cool" enough to be a destination for young people moving without jobs the way Austin and Portland are and it's not perceived as desirable enough (mostly weather and scenery-wise) for snowbird retirees the way Phoenix and Florida are. This is a great launching city for career-minded individuals and its a great city to own a home and raise a family. The growth numbers pretty well reflect that.

I will really be interested to see how the metro growth fares over the next few years. I can't imagine that low oil prices combined with the negative publicity the state has received so far this year not slowing things down a bit.

[LocoAko]

What cities are in the "great plains region"? Kansas City and Omaha are usually thrown in with the Midwest and Denver with the Western United States. The major Texas cities are very much considered Sunbelt and OKC and Tulsa are closely tied to Texas economically and culturally. Therefore, I would consider Oklahoma to be the Sunbelt.

I don't know if you'll accept Wikipedia as an official source, but adaniel is exactly right in his descriptions.

Sunbelt:



Source: Sun Belt - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The 2013 estimate of 610,613 is the largest population Oklahoma City has ever recorded. It is the first city in the state to record a population greater than 600,000 residents and is by far the largest municipal population of the Great Plains region (OK, KS, NE, SD, ND).

Source: Oklahoma City - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[bchris02]

Thanks, I stand corrected. I am not sure what the reasoning is in not including most of Arkansas and Oklahoma in the Sunbelt however.

[AP]

Thanks, I stand corrected. I am not sure what the reasoning is in not including most of Arkansas and Oklahoma in the Sunbelt however.

There are plenty of google images showing it as part of the Sunbelt so I'm sure it is similar to how people define regions such as the south and midwest. There are no real boundaries.

[ctchandler]

This information posted by LocoAko "The 2013 estimate of 610,613 is the largest population Oklahoma City has ever recorded. It is the first city in the state to record a population greater than 600,000 residents and is by far the largest municipal population of the Great Plains region (OK, KS, NE, SD, ND)." reminded me of a saying in the 50's, "600,000 in 60 (1960)". Well, we finally made it.
C. T.

[adaniel]

Thank you LokoAko, I tried to post that very map and gave up in frustration!

Oklahoma is an incredibly hard state to compartmentalize into a neat region. So I refuse to hash that out here. Economically speaking, however, we are very much a "Great Plains" type economy. Meaning, we have a primary type economy, either based on mineral extraction or agriculture, and most of our high skilled tertiary/services/manufacturing type activities are related to the refining and processing of those natural resources. We have to deal with booms/busts in commodity prices; a crash in oil prices affects Oklahoma just as much as a crash in cattle prices does in West Texas or ethanol/corn prices in Nebraska. When examining population figures, you'd also have to take into consideration the steep rural flight that has occurred for decades. To answer a question upthread, yes, I consider Omaha and KC as fair economic comparisons, as would I most (but definitely not all) of Texas.

Compare that to the traditional "sunbelt" states, which are far more dependent on services, tourism, and low-ish wage, de-unionized manufacturing that has been "outsourced" from the NE and Great Lakes. The sunbelt also receives a lot of relocating retirees from the same area; I love OKC as much as anyone else but I don't see freezing 60-somethings from Ohio dreaming of retiring in Edmond.

I don't typically agree with his writing, but Joe Kotkin explains this far better than I could: America?s Next Decade - Forbes

To tie this back into the theme of this thread, all of these things (and many more) would have to be taken into consideration when trying to compare different cities to OKC, with regards to historical population. IMO it would be a monumental task and may not show much of a correlation.

[RadicalModerate]

It's a bogus survey if OKC isn't at the top. One way 'r t' other.
(it took a minute amount of energy to post that)
I hope The New Grand Boulevard
Proceeds apace.

[Bunty]

At least the Oklahoma panhandle and Red River are in the Sunbelt.