The port of Houston is closed until at least the end of the week, a major hit to both energy imports and exports. The situation may be far worse in the port of Corpus Christi, which may be crippled for some time since a drill ship broke loose from some tugboats and ran aground in the narrow shipping channel near Port Aransas, perhaps the most threatened choke point on the entire coast. The giant shale oil fields of West Texas have not been affected by the weather, but several long-haul pipelines that take the crude from the Permian Basin to coastal refineries have shut down, and that could eventually force production companies to slow their operations.

“I don’t know if you will see a mass exodus from the Houston area,” said Harald Jordan, vice president for engineering at Peak Energy, an oil and gas exploration company based in Colorado. “From a strategic perspective, any company that is invested in a volatile region like that might want to rethink their concentration of critical assets and people there.”

But other parts of the country are much less supportive of the oil and gas industry, one of the primary reasons that refineries and natural-gas import and export facilities were concentrated in the region in the first place. Texans and others in the region have depended on the industry for their livelihoods for generations.

So far, oil and gas price increases have remained muted because so much oil and gasoline was in storage around the country when the storm hit and because most drivers along the coastal gulf areas are staying at home. The national average for regular gasoline on Tuesday was $2.38 a gallon, only 4 cents above a week ago, according to the AAA motor club. Texas prices were $2.19 a gallon, 6 cents above a week ago. A bigger problem for many drivers is the flooding of gasoline stations.

But prices are likely to shoot up in the coming weeks, many experts say, as the damage to refineries begins to be felt in reduced deliveries.