Texas is paying the price. But the rest of us. We are learning something about the oil market in this economy from american public media this is marketplace in los angeles. I'm kai ryssdal. It is wednesday today the seventeenth day of february. Good as always to have you along everybody. We talked yesterday. For a bit about the vagaries of the texas energy market which along with the cold and the snow and the ice has left millions of people. Three at least more than that probably. That's millions of course without power and the thing is that even after the weather starts improving eventually the effects of this now three day long crisis are likely to linger and to be felt far beyond the lone star state. That's partly because of how the oil market works or in. Some cases doesn't marketplace adjusted. Ho gets going when the oil supply chain for as it should oil gets pumped out of the ground truck door pipe to a refinery and transformed into products including gasoline diesel and jet fuel. All of these your experience some type of disruption because of the weather. That's matt smith. Director of commodity. Research clipper data which tracks the oil supply chain. He says right now. Oil just isn't getting pumped out of the ground refineries or shutdown and companies aren't exporting barrels. Out of the gulf coast. We're seeing a number that he's different pull such is houston coppola's christie being closed the gulf coast handles roughly half of the country's oil refining capacity. That means the effects of the extreme cold will ripple even further down the supply chain throughout the us says michael weber and energy professor at the university of texas in jet fuel. Atlanta depends on a refinery in east texas which depends on oil production in west texas when it comes to gasoline refineries have a certain amount stored up that trucks can deliver to retail gas stations. For now that's because earlier this month. Gasoline supplies relatively normal levels but energy. Professor tom sang at the university of tulsa says if they're not replenished the question becomes okay along with these refineries to be shut down and how much how many days it supplied is. This actually represents in the meantime prices of oil and gas futures have started rising. Sang says that means all of us could soon start paying more to. I would expect that. Certainly electric bills and natural gas bills are gonna see. Spikes sang says that might be further down the line for the rest of the country. But it's already affecting the millions of texans needing heating oil