Energy Corridor & the Oil Majors

Houston calls itself the energy capital of the world, and if that title has an address, it's here — a two-thousand-acre stretch of west Houston along Interstate 10 where the great oil and gas companies built sprawling suburban campuses instead of downtown towers. Starting in the 1970s oil boom, firms hungry for land and close to new subdivisions planted their headquarters along the Katy Freeway between Beltway 8 and the Grand Parkway, and by the 1980s the area had a name: the Energy Corridor. Today it's Houston's second-largest job center, more than three hundred companies and ninety-plus thousand workers, its low glass campuses ringed by parking and pine. This drive rolls past the marquee names of the global energy business and the older farming country they replaced — a tour of the modern engine that keeps the region's economy running.