President visits Basin for celebration of company's new operations center.

Dallas-based Atmos Energy Corp. hosted a celebration Tuesday for its new Permian Basin Operations center, located between Midland and Odessa adjacent to the Carl O. Hyde General Mail Facility near Midland International Airport.

The celebration brought to town Bob Best, who has served as chairman of the board, president and chief executive officer for 11 years.

"Atmos has wanted, for a lot of years, to consolidate its operations in the Permian Basin," said Best, sitting in an office in the new building, which will officially open March 1. The new building, he continued, brings together three different Permian Basin locations under one roof.

The new location has the added benefit of being centrally located between Midland and Odessa, two communities Best noted seem to be growing together. The communities are also a hotbed of economic activity, he said, pointing out that last year Atmos laid 100,000 feet of pipeline to homes and commercial locations, "three times more than we normally lay in a typical or 'normal' year. That shows the tremendous economic activity going on this area."

He stressed that the move to consolidate the company's Permian Basin operations into the new building was not done to cut work force but to centrally locate its staff and put them under one roof. Having all staff under one roof promotes teamwork and camaraderie, he said. In fact, he said, if the Permian Basin continues to thrive economically as has it has, "we'll have to add people."

West Texas, he said, is where the company got its start in 1983 "and going back to 1906 with our predecessor companies. This is our roots; West Texas is known for being friendly, for being hospitable, and we want that to be the epitome of how we run our company."

Best is similarly bullish on the outlook for natural gas, which he called by far the cleanest fossil fuel available and a commodity that plays a big role in the economic well-being of Texas, the nation's largest producing state and largest consuming state for natural gas.

"I view natural gas as what I would say is a bridge to the future," Best said. "A growing economy depends on what I call reasonably-priced energy. If you're going an economy at any rate, you need reasonably-priced energy."

Nuclear energy will be a possible future source of energy, he said, but it will be 10 or 15 years before any nuclear plants are online so that's not an option. He called clean coal technology an oxymoron and a technology that is "not close to gas" in development.

"If you listen to the media, you'd think we need to conserve energy and depend on renewable energy. Renewable energy is less than 1 percent of what we use today. I'm not saying not to keep working on renewable energy, but it's not an answer near or short-term. We are going to have to depend on natural gas if we want to clean up the environment," Best said.

He added consumers are beginning to realize there will be a significant cost to cleaning up the environment and "no politicians are forthcoming on that fact."

Another issue, he said, is the fact this nation is not willing to drill offshore, where there are large reserves of natural gas to be produced. "We need natural gas to moderate prices, but we're not willing to go where there are significant reserves," he said. "We're talking about bringing in LNG (liquefied natural gas) and building terminals along the Gulf Coast because other states where terminals could be built, in the Northeast, don't want them.

Also providing a challenge, he said, is the increasing globalization of natural gas. While it is not as globally traded as crude oil, Best said worldwide demand for natural gas is increasing and the United States will have to be competing with other nations like China, India and Japan for natural gas supplies. That, he said, will keep gas prices strong and he doesn't see any abatement in price levels in the near future.

"From an economic standpoint, that's good for Texas. It creates jobs, it creates economic activity, there are economic incentives for land owners. A lot of people benefit where drilling is going on at a significant rate," he said. "The other side is, those high prices are giving producers incentive to drill for gas. The Barnett Shale would not have been developed with gas at $2 an MCF. The production of oil and gas has a tremendous ripple effect throughout the economy."

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Mella McEwen can be reached at casell@mrt.com.

New Mexico Airlines is expanding service to include Ruidoso, Midland/Odessa and El Paso, Texas.

The carrier is a subsidiary of Pacific Wings, based in Hawaii, and begins daily air service into Sierra Blanca Regional Airport 15 miles northwest of Ruidoso starting Feb. 11 from Albuquerque, Midland/Odessa and other southern New Mexico cities. Flights between Ruidoso and El Paso are to begin March 1.

The carrier is also starting daily service on Feb. 11 to Midland/Odessa and El Paso from Albuquerque, Carlsbad and Hobbs. These new flights are in addition to New Mexico Airlines' current service between Albuquerque, Hobbs, Carlsbad and Alamogordo.

The new flights were hailed by tourism officials and the Ruidoso Valley Chamber of Commerce as an economic boost for the area.

"This decision by New Mexico airlines, joining American Eagle's current offering of direct daily flights between Roswell and Dallas-Fort Worth, means New Mexico will no longer be the country's best-kept secret," said Michael Cerletti, secretary of the New Mexico Tourism Department.

While there are signs that the country is in the beginnings of a national recession, the exact opposite is true for West Texas where some folks are calling it a boom, and it's all tied to oil.

Doug Robison is the president of ExL Petroleum. Robison will tell you the Texas economy was built on oil and gas and, "there are few things that are necessary to life that are non-negotiable. One is food. Another is energy. We have to have it."

Robison is drilling for oil again just outside Midland because the demand for oil has never been greater. Last month the price of crude oil peaked twice at $100 a barrel.

Supply and demand dictate the price. Emerging nations like China and India are industrializing at an amazing pace. Cars are replacing bicycles and along with that comes an increasing appetite for oil.

Midland Mayor Wes Perry, who is in the oil business himself, puts it this way: "2.2 billion people on the earth are trying to go from one barrel a day per year, to two, three, and even up to five barrels a day per year." The increase means tremendous pressure is being placed on the world's oil supplies. The United States alone slurps up a quarter of the world's oil and it is a finite resource.

Tim Dunn is the CEO of Crownquest Operating, LLC, another Midland exploration company. Dunn said, "There's a shortage of oil. All the easy stuff's been found. All the easy reserves, all the big giant oil fields."

Dunn is drilling again as well. Some of the projects involve recovering secondary and tertiary oil from old wells which had been capped when oil prices were so low that it was no longer profitable to keep the pumps going. "Much of the things that we're drilling now, we're drilling because of the price. If the price went down to 50, we wouldn't do it," he said.

Doug Robison agrees saying, "Areas that you couldn't prospect before, wells that you couldn't drill economically before, now you can."

The effect of all this in the Permian Basin has been a shot in the arm to the economies of Midland and Odessa. Midland currently boasts the lowest unemployment rate in Texas. Jobs are actually waiting for workers.

Robison said he is scrambling to find enough workers to keep his new rigs. Robison tells CBS 11, "If you have viewers in the Metroplex that need somewhere to work and don't mind working hard, come to the Petroplex. We've got plenty to do out here."

Mayor Perry said the welcome mat is out. "We would love them to come to Midland. It's just been amazing, the attraction for the industry and what's going on here."

There's also the trickle down effect. New apartments are going up for the first time in 20 years. Office space is at a premium, and there's a boom in new housing construction. Perry said last year Midland issued 550 new housing permits. That's more than Midland has seen since 1980. This year 600 permits have already been issued.

After 18 years in Dallas, geophysicist Todd Stallings moved his business from the Meadows Building off Central Expressway to an office tower in downtown Midland. "It was a good time to move. We had a real good year last year. I sold a lot of prospects."

The walls of Stallings' office are covered with charts of the 3-d seismic data he interprets for his clients. Stallings combines his know-how and sophisticated computer technology to find oil that previously went undetected. Higher crude prices make it all worthwhile.

"We'll identify a prospect and then we'll determine if it's worth drilling. Then we take it out on the road and try to find partners to drill."

Stallings said he misses Dallas, but with the oil patch booming again, the move to Midland was a no-brainer. "I can walk within two blocks of this office and probably show prospects to 30-40 different operators. To see that many in Dallas, you'd have to drive all over town," he said.

Robison said as fears grow of a national recession, the opposite is true in Midland. "Generally when the nation's economy is up, we're down. And when we're up, they're down." Midland and the entire Permian Basin area may be somewhat insulated from any recession because of the growing need and the high price of oil.

However, the boom and bust roller coaster has been a ride the folks in West Texas are way too familiar with.

Kyle Stallings is the Managing Partner for the Permian Basin Acquisition Fund. Stallings buys mineral rights, and he still remembers the hard times. "Our rig count had dropped from 4,500 rigs in the early '80's down to 600 rigs in 1999. In the '80's and '90's the economy was so bad Midland was in a deep depression."

But this time it's different. With increasing worldwide demand, the days of even $60 a barrel oil may be gone forever. Yet, it's still a high risk game for those willing to play. Tim Dunn will tell you that, "actually making money's the difficult part. It's always been that way in the oil business."

Geologists have long known there's a great deal of oil still locked in some very hard rock all through the Permian Basin, but you have to drill through that hard rock to get to the oil trapped more than two miles beneath the surface. The high price of oil makes that drilling very profitable once again.

That also makes it profitable for the many service companies that transport rigs and machinery, and manufacture pipe and drill bits.

Diamond Oil Well Drilling Company, Inc. (DOWDCO) manufactures drill bits to get though that rock. A few months ago, Doug Pyles was in restaurant management in Midland. Today he sells drill bits for DOWDCO. "I mean without a drill bit, you can't drill the well."

Pyles said going from customer service to sales was a natural transition. He enjoys going out to sell his product and talk to the customers. He also enjoys a healthy pay increase almost doubling what he made at the restaurant.

"The biggest thing is the money. It's a good, good paycheck," he said.

DOWDCO shop foreman Richard White remodeled homes for almost nine years before he heard the call from Midland. He said there could be a job there for you too.

"Oh we could definitely use more help," said White. "We're probably three or four guys short right now in the shop."

DOWDCO owner Dennis Yeager echoes that. His company has doubled its workforce in the past 5 years, and he's still struggling to meet the demand for drill bits.

"For us to continue the growth, we certainly are going to have to have more people," he said.

That wasn't always the case. Yeager can still remember that in 1988 "I was actually making payroll off of a credit card. Probably if I'd had one more month like I had previous, I wouldn't be here today in this position."

So with the uncertainty of the oil business, why do folks like Yeager remain in it? Yeager said the oil business just gets in your blood and you run 'till your last breath.

Robison said boom or bust, it all gets down to what someone's willing to pay for oil.

"That's part of the risk obviously of the oil and gas industry," said Robison. "It's also part of the romance."

Those high oil prices may be anything but romantic to drivers paying over $3 a gallon for gasoline and no end in sight, but economists say with the oil and gas business booming, and with the state's diversified economy, Texas could fare better than any other state during the recession of 2008.

(© MMVIII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

Assessing future traffic and environmental and community concerns, the Texas Department of Transportation will hold four public meetings on the proposed La Entrada al Pacifico trade route from Feb. 19-26 in Alpine, Presidio, Fort Stockton and Midland-Odessa.

A study team that has been reviewing the plan will host an open house with data and drawings 6 p.m. Monday, Feb. 25, at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin's Center for Energy and Economic Diversification at Highway 191 and Farm to Market 1788.

A presentation with a question and answer session will be at 7 p.m. "Due to funding limitations and statewide competition from other projects, a plan is needed to address mobility deficiencies, the environment and community visions," said TxDOT Executive Director Amadeo Saenz of Austin.

"If the 25-year trade flow forecast at the Presidio port of entry is significant, this study will help form a plan to minimize area impacts. If the flow is relatively low, it will address only safety and local mobility needs."

Saenz said the review "is not to promote a trade corridor, it's to assess the potential of a corridor and forecast trade flow. Once a realistic number is determined, only then can local and regional impacts on the Texas roadway network be assessed."

With each open house and presentation at 6 p.m. and 7 p.m., other meetings will be Tuesday, Feb. 19, in the Espiño Conference Room at Sul Ross State University in Alpine, Wednesday, Feb. 20 at Presidio High School and Tuesday, Feb. 26, at Fort Stockton High School.

La Entrada would generally run north from Presidio on U.S. 67-90 through or around Marfa, Alpine and Fort Stockton to Interstate 20 and Midland on 1788 to the Highway 349 reliever route, 349, Lamesa and Lubbock.

Since similar hearings last March, TxDOT has considered freight diversion at ports in Los Angeles and Long Beach, Calif., trade generation in Mexico, Panama Canal impact and U.S.-Mexico border crossings other than Presidio's, said Saenz.

"The team has worked with representatives of regional groups and communities to review assumptions of the forecasting process and reflect the impact of global economics and assess area needs," he said.