Leaner days are back in the oil patch of South Texas. Once-busy roads are empty except for the workers repairing the potholes from the damage done by truck traffic in the last boom. Oil producers have begun to lay off employees and call their service companies to say that they have drilled their last well for a while. One temporary-housing camp is offering free food to attract lodgers, and trailer parks are emptying. And the collapse of oil prices to nearly $30 a barrel — roughly a 50 percent decline from the beginning of the year — is just beginning to sink in. Saudi Arabia’s decision last weekend to ramp up production, even as the global coronavirus outbreak saps demand for fuel, is driving up global supplies with no place to go but storage tanks. But even as […]