On Monday the price of U.S. crude oil dropped to below $20 a barrel for the first time since 2002. The oil price plummet is due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic that’s halted fuel demand and disrupted various sectors of the economy.

Texas voters approved the creation of the rainy day fund in 1988 as an emergency piggy bank to rescue state government in case future leaders faced the sort of oil-and-gas crash that beset the state budget in the 1980s.

An economic cyclone is ripping through Midland and the rest of Texas, the leading oil-producing state in the US. The Covid-19 outbreak has led to government stay-at-home orders that turned busy roads into empty blacktop. The ensuing collapse in fuel demand has halved the value of Texas crude amid an all-out price war between Saudi…

The coronavirus is slamming the U.S. economy, and is likely to hit the Texas economy pretty hard as well. With plunging oil prices and shuttered businesses across the state, the pandemic has threatened two of Texas’ biggest budget sources—oil revenues and sales taxes. State Comptroller Glenn Hegar has already signaled he may revise the budget downward for…

The merciless carnage ravaged on the economy by the efforts to stymie the spread of the new coronavirus and a parallel crash in oil prices promise to choke revenue streams for Texas cities and the state government.