From the mucky waters of Galveston Bay on the Gulf of Mexico, the Houston Ship Channel sluggishly winds 50 miles into southern Texas. From both banks, scrubby rangeland and salt marshes stretch to the horizon, relieved occasionally by a decrepit farmhouse or a forlorn oil rig. Then suddenly, around one of the canal's innumerable bends, a $2 billion complex of oil refineries and chemical plants erupts on the landscape. Soon the inland-bound passenger spies in the distance what appears to be a skyscraper, then several skyscrapers, then a full metropolitan skyline. It might be a mirage shimmering on the...
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