Beaumont was the original jewel in the Texas oil crown – the home place of the Spindletop Gusher.
Now a century later it’s a region, which has learned to diversify to better bare the brunt of volatile marketplace.
January 10, 1901 saw the community cemented in the exploration record books, when Captain Anthony Lucas drilled a well to 1,139 ft.
The discovery spewed 100,000 barrels over the first nine days, before crews managed to cull the flow.
The find later saw Beaumont become one of the first oil boom towns. The quiet community saw its population triple to 30,000 in three months before eventually reaching 50,000.
Regina Lindsey the chief executive of the Greater Beaumont Chamber of Commerce said: “It really changed the face of Beaumont, Southeast Texas and Texas. That was the largest discovery of oil at the time. And we celebrate that every year, because it really formed the foundation of our economy.”
Three years later the mammoth fine started to slow the community experience its first slide down the economic “L” curve.
This time around, after oil skimmed $30 and clawed its way back to the $50 mark, the community and its business sector is continuing to flex its development muscles.
“We have done something that other parts of the country and the world have wanted to do, but find it difficult to do. What we’ve done is introduce diversification in our energy sector. With the advent of liquefied natural gas (LNG) into our sector, it has really provided some stabilization in Southeast Texas when the volatility of price of oil starts moving all over the place.
“And we’re very proud of the fact that once the law changed on our federal government level that we were the first to export LNG out of the United States, sending a shipment to Brazil. But now we’ve exported to Europe and Asia.”
The region also attracted $84million of investment from Nat Gasoline.
“We are still a very fast growing market here. We still lead the state in terms of GDP. And that’s down to our ability to bring different forms of energy into our community,” Lindsey said.
“We have been an energy community since the 1900s and that’s never going change. But we have had the ability to bring in different forms of energy and some of those forms actually thrive when the price of oil goes down, so it keeps the ship afloat.
“ Our LNG sector here is doing fantastic when the price of oil is down. Our methanol plants do well when oil is down.
We are also close to the Piney Woods and we have a lot of wood pellets. That goes out to Europe in a form of energy, so that is exported out of the port of Beaumont and so we don’t see the same sort of volatility that some of the other market do.”
The Beaumont community is also set to benefit from an energy friendly administration under Trump’s appetite for exploration.
“Overall the local businesses are looking forward to some things like loosening up some regulations from the EPA, including transportation infrastructure because we have a widening and deepening project that really needs to move forward with the Panama Canal. President Trump seems to have that as an area of focus,” Lindsey said.
Businesses that previously spent millions of pounds and years waiting for permits under the previous administration expect a fast-tracked process, according to Lindsey.
“With the previous administration, what held up our growth was the time it took to get permits,” she said.
“We had projects that gone through an environmental study and the environmental study said this an absolutely sound project there is absolutely no environmental impact, but we were still having to wait three to four years with millions of dollars being spent in order to get those permits. That’s really going to change and will help move the economy forward.
“Now we are seeing a net growth in jobs. There are some businesses that are very tied to the upstream side of things and are feeling a contraction in their workforce, but if you look at the overall numbers there is growth.
“The key to recovery is going to when those policies in the federal level are actually in place.
“I think the quicker that landscape gets defined and businesses are comfortable, I think the quicker the turnaround will be.
“Businesses don’t like uncertainty. They want to know what they’re dealing with.”
But for community who weathered the first boom and bust there is one certainty it holds above all else – the power of diversification.
“The midstream and downstream are both very strong for us now, because we have a lot of refineries here,” Lindsey said.
“You talk about diversification all the time, but when it happens and you’re able to really see that come together in your community it really does provide a safety net for the community.”
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