As noted in earlier posts here and here, things have not been going well recently for El Paso Corp. Now, the company is making the rounds with its banks. Not a good sign.

This previous post addressed Mayor White‘s premature announcement of ChevronTexaco‘s purchase of the former Enron Building in downtown Houston. Harris County Commissioners announced today that they are not inclined to grant the ad valorem tax abatement that ChevronTexaco was relying on in agreeing to the deal to the buy the building. Commissioner Steve Radack, hopefully in a fit of delusion, suggested that the County might step up and buy the building if ChevronTexaco backs out of the deal.

This NY Times article describes the interesting life inside Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s largest oil company, which retains its decided Western influence even after Saudi citizens have taken over its top management positions. As the Times article notes:

Try not to make too much of the women driving sport utility vehicles, the baseball diamonds, the thousands of Americans and Britons or the cul-de-sacs with names like Prairie View at the well-guarded headquarters of Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil company.
. . . While Aramco’s importance to the Saudi economy and the global energy industry is hard to underestimate, the company, like other Western-influenced areas of society, has been caught in the cross hairs of Islamic conservative objections to its American-style management approach.
For instance, while women nearly everywhere in Saudi Arabia are required by religious law to dress conservatively in black shawls and prohibited from driving, Aramco’s female employees are allowed to wear Western clothing and drive on company property. Old-fashioned American business practices also persist at Aramco, down to the gold watch after 30 years of service.
And in a striking difference from many oil companies that were seized by governments in the developing world in the last century, Aramco never required its American employees to leave. Though its top executives are now Saudis, the official language remains English, making it easier for the 2,000 Americans who work for the company in Saudi Arabia, most of them living in this dusty city across the border from Bahrain.
The company still provides plentiful perks to attract American employees, who call themselves Aramcons. The benefits for Americans and other expatriates from rich countries include subsidized ranch-style suburban houses at Aramco’s compound here, free health and dental care at the company’s own hospitals, nearly 40 vacation days a year and free private education for children until high school, when the company will pay 80 percent of boarding-school costs in the United States.
Aramco, which produces about eight million barrels a day, generated an estimated $85 billion in oil revenue last year . . . The company’s financial clout extends to other areas, like its fleet of jet aircraft used to travel inside and outside Saudi Arabia. All its pilots are trained in the United States or Britain.
“It feels almost normal here until you get outside the company and its compounds,” said Richard Pattee, a native of Tacoma, Wash., who moved to Dhahran in October to pilot the company’s new Boeing 737.