WELL OILED: Topping Out In Houston Again

WELL OILED

Send the architects south. Silicon Valley may be powerless and profitless, but Houston, the nation's energy capital and home to the oil-baron excesses of the 1980s, is back in "bidness." The energy giants in Texas have big fat wallets these days--and even bigger construction plans. Not since the boom days of 1982, when trophy architects like Philip Johnson and I.M. Pei reconfigured the skyline, has Houston seen so much construction activity by the energy sector.

Leading the parade, ironically, is Enron, an old energy behemoth that has reinvented itself as a high-tech trading firm dealing in everything from natural gas to...

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