Oil price weakness is finally catching up with Texas oil producers and contraction is now expected throughout 2016, an industry economist said. Oil field services company Baker Hughes estimates 305 rigs were active in Texas in January, down 60 percent from the previous year. Karr Ingham, an economist who created the Texas Petro Index, said last time markets were this weak, there were about 100,000 fewer jobs than the estimated 230,000 in the exploration and production sector for January. Without any sort of meaningful recovery, he said in an emailed report that the “bloodletting in Texas’ upstream oil and gas industry will continue as the year progresses.” The Texas Petro Index, a metric developed by Ingham to gauge the […]