I used to work in the industry. In the near term after a price drop, companies will still have projects they need to work on, and they have cash buffers on hand so they don't have to axe their whole staff after a bump in the road.

However, those cash reserves will quickly burn though. And the worst part is a lot of Houston's economy is buttressed by oilfield services companies, which make all their money off drilling new fracking wells.

Right now, it makes 0 sense to drill new fracking wells (-40 sense, to be more accurate), and they have big loans on billions of dollars worth of equipment.

It's gonna hurt soon, and it's going to hurt very bad.