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DALLAS—It’s a weird time for the oil and gas business.
It’s always kind of weird, of course—it’s a weird business, the unlikely offspring of swaggering Texas miscreants in big hats and nerds with doctorates in geophysics, gamblers and engineers, wildcatters and roboticists—but right now, if you talk to a Texas landman or a Washington oil lobbyist, you can’t help but see that the industry is being pushed and pulled in at least two ways at once: With Trump in the White House and a high tide for the kind of atavistic populism that loves cheap gasoline almost as much as it hates foreigners and college professors, oil and gas should be riding high, but that isn’t the case.