'We Could Be Out of Work in Just a Few Weeks'

Thanks to the worldwide collapse in oil prices, Texas lost 72,000 oil and gas jobs last year. In South Texas, many of the boom-and-bust towns that surround the Eagle Ford natural gas field have since taken on an abandoned feel, strewn with half-built infrastructure and emptied “man camps” that had been erected only a few years earlier.

Season 2 of Van Alen Sessions, presented by Van Alen Institute with The Atlantic and CityLab, continues with a visit to embattled Dimmit County. Locals and experts alike in the region are all wondering the same thing: whether they’ve witnessed their last surge of petroleum-fueled prosperity.