re: Latoya At It Again - Pontalba Apartment During Essence Fest

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The biggest boom for Houston came in 1959 when Jersey Oil merged with Humble Oil and moved its corporate offices to Houston. 13 years later it was renamed Exxon, the largest energy company in the world at the time. It chose Houston for multiple reasons. Primarily, Texas was America’s top producing crude oil state and by a large margin. To be at the center of production was natural for an oil company. New Orleans was not and the Louisiana Gulf reserves did not match those in Texas, where it was also cheaper to drill. One can give politicians credit or blame one way or the other, but I have little doubt that if you swapped Houston and New Orleans’ politicians from the 40s to today, both cities would look quite similar to today. Houston became America’s energy capital and the strongest economy in the South not because of local populace and politician genius. It was mostly, like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait, due to geography.

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I'd argue the death of New Orleans as a regional financial capital has been as big a blow as the loss of oil related jobs, but it probably goes hand in hand.