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Port Arthur is a city within the Beaumont--Port Arthur metropolitan area of the U.S. state of Texas. Port Arthur was founded by Arthur Edward Stilwell in the late 19th century, and was once the center of the largest oil refinery network in the world.

Home to a large chunk of United States refining capacity, Port Arthur is now seeing renewed investment in several key installations. Motiva Enterprises is undertaking a major addition to its western Port Arthur refinery, expanding capacity to 600,000 barrels per day. This $3.6 billion project is the largest US refinery expansion to occur in 30 years. Premcor Refining recently completed a $775 million expansion of its petrochemical plant, and BASF/Fina commenced operations of a new $1.75 billion gasification and cogeneration unit on premises of it's current installation, which had just completed its own $1 billion upgrade. Port Arthur also has a significant air pollution problem that some believe has an impact on the health of its residents.

Anthony F. Lucas, an experienced mining engineer drilled the first major oil well at Spindletop, on the morning of January 10, 1901 the little hill south of Beaumont, Texas. The East Texas Oil Field, discovered on October 5, 1930 is located in east central part of the state, and is the largest and most prolific oil reservoir in the contiguous United States. Other oil fields were later discovered in West Texas and under the Gulf of Mexico. The resulting "Oil Boom" permanently transformed the economy of Texas, and led to the first significant economic expansion after the Civil War.

Most of us speed past refineries, with their steel towers and scary flares, never stopping to consider what goes on inside. Daily, refinery employees manage high pressures and volatile chemicals while pumping out millions of gallons of gasoline. Harris County, which includes Houston, reports more toxic releases to the Environmental Protection Agency than any other county in the United States. The region along the Gulf Coast is home to 250 petrochemical plants, and in Houston alone, an estimated 78,000 kids go to school within two miles of a refinery or chemical plant. Between 1995 and 2005, 27 of the 48 Americans who died in accidents at major refineries were from Texas. Oil provides a paycheck for many Texas families, but refineries also pollute their air and water, and cause them to worry about their safety.

With oil prices setting records, years of neglect finally appear to be coming to an end. The Apache Corporation is drilling new wells. Workers are flocking to sparsely populated West Texas, living in motels and trailer parks. Dishwashers and teachers are fleeing their jobs for $60,000 gigs in the fields. But for all the new wealth and activity, the best the industry can hope to accomplish is to slow the decline of American oil production. The big problem: the nation’s oil fields are mostly tapped out. While modern technology is giving workers the ability to squeeze more crude out of wells in North McElroy and other oil patches around the country, overall output is on an intractable slide. In the United States, oil production has fallen in every one of the last six years, according to the government, even as prices quadrupled.

Texas freeways have been heavily traveled since the 1948 opening of the Gulf Freeway in Houston, and they are often under construction to meet the demands of continuing growth. As of 2005, there were 79,535 miles (127,999 km) of public highway in Texas (up from 71,000 in 1984). Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) planners have sought ways to reduce rush hour congestion, primarily through high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes for vans and carpools. The "Texas T"--an innovation originally introduced in Houston--is a ramp design that allows vehicles in the HOV lane, which is usually the center lane, to exit directly to transit centers or to enter the freeway directly into the HOV lane without crossing multiple lanes of traffic. Timed freeway entrances, which regulate the addition of cars to the freeway, are also common. Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, and El Paso have extensive networks of freeway cameras linked to transit control centers to monitor and study traffic.