Petro Metro (Houston nickname)

The city of Houston has large business interests in the petrochemical industry. ‘Petro Metro” (or “Petro-Metro”) is an untrademarked and infrequently used Houston nickname.
 
Reuters Houston Bureau Chief Christ Baltimore used “Petro Mero” in news stories written in October 2008 and February 2010.
 
   
Wikipedia: Houston
Houston (pronounced /ˈhjuːstən/) is the fourth-largest city in the United States and the largest city in the state of Texas. As of the 2008 U.S. Census estimate, the city had a population of 2.2 million within an area of 600 square miles (1,600 km2). Houston is the seat of Harris County and the economic center of the Houston–Sugar Land–Baytown metropolitan area—the sixth-largest metropolitan area in the U.S. with a population over 5.7 million.
 
Reuters India
Oil dollars help Houston dodge U.S. economic woes
Tue Oct 14, 2008 1:25pm IST
By Chris Baltimore
HOUSTON (Reuters) - Even after Hurricane Ike smashed thousands of windows in Houston’s skyscrapers last month, times could not be much better in the Petro Metro.
   
DC Days
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
The Petro Metro
We have just returned from an action-packed trip to Texas.
   
BiggerPockets.com
Daniel Y.
Posted: 02/01/2010 at 08:25PM  
Sure thing-
 
Again, 100 units more or less of Class B and C properties, no war zones here in Houston. Would prefer in good school zones (Katy, Bellaire, etc.), but otherwise location is anywhere in our great “petro-metro.”
 
Reuters
Chris Baltimore
Houston aims to be electric car capital
Feb 16, 2010 13:54 EST
HOUSTON (Reuters) – Houston, nicknamed the Petro Metro for the profusion of oil and gas companies that dot its skyline, is an unlikely host for an electric-car revolution.
 
But the fourth-biggest U.S. city that claims the title of the “Energy Capital of the World” is competing with cities like San Francisco to be the nation’s electric car capital.
 
“We are the Petro Metro but we are also a car city,” said newly elected Mayor Annise Parker, speaking at an event on February 5 to promote the Nissan LEAF, an all-electric, five-passenger vehicle that can travel 100 miles on a single charge.
       
Times Colonist (Western Canada)
Petro Metro aims to clean up its act
Houston is vying for title of electric car capital of the U.S.
By Chris Baltimore, Reuters
February 26, 2010
Houston, nicknamed the Petro Metro for the profusion of oil and gas companies that dot its skyline, is an unlikely host for an electric-car revolution.

But the fourth-biggest U.S. city that claims the title of the “Energy Capital of the World” is competing with cities like San Francisco to be the nation’s electric car capital.
 
Houston (TX) Press
Houston 101: Yet Another New Nickname For The Bayou City, Er, Space City, Um, H-Town…
By John Nova Lomax, Tuesday, Mar. 9 2010 @ 8:01AM
Unlike, say, the Big Apple or the Eternal City, Houston has never quite settled on one definitive nickname. A Canadian newspaper has just announced that we have a new one, but more on that in a second…
(...)
And now we are supposedly “the Petro Metro.”
 
No less an authority than newly-elected mayor Annise Parker says so:
 
“We are the Petro Metro but we are also a car city,” she said last month, in remarks introducing Houston’s seemingly-unlikely attempts to spearhead the electric car industry.

Electric cars? If those things take off too well, that would kill our own favorite local nickname: “The City of Refined Oil and Crude People.”