More than half of the publicly traded companies in Houston are oil and gas related. Nearly three-fourths of them have dipped lower in the past 12 months.
Brian Busch, director of oil markets and business development at Genscape, said not just Houston, but the entire world is facing an oil supply-demand imbalance.
"We are oversupplied with crude production right now, given what the world demand is, and until the economy picks up, it's going to continue," he told CNBC's "Power Lunch" on Tuesday. "We have over 100 million barrels of storage in tanks above where we were this time last year."
Busch said he thinks U.S. oil production might see a decline of another 800,000 barrels a day, especially when considering not only the existing overproduction but also new output coming from Brazil, Iran and potentially Libya.
He added that this global supply-demand imbalance isn't going to correct itself anytime soon.
"Right now, I don't see it," Busch said. "I don't see anything on the horizon that makes me believe economics are going to pick up in China or Europe. And I certainly don't see anything that makes me think that OPEC is going to blink or the Russians are going to cut back."
One expert begs to differ.
Matt Portillo, managing director of equity research at Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co., thinks a big shift could be in oil's future.
"Over the next six months, supply-demand is going to start to cause inventories to draw," he told CNBC's "Power Lunch" on Tuesday. "As that occurs, we should start to see a very significant correction in crude."
According to Portillo, this move could bring crude prices closer to $70 a barrel by the fourth quarter.
In fact, he said this is a good time to begin investing in the energy sector.
"Generally investors are underweight energy at the moment. As we get into the back half of this year, investors will move to an overweight position. That means the stocks could move materially higher," he said.
Portillo named EOG Resources, Concho, Cimarex Energy, and Encana as some of his favorite picks in this space.
Former Dallas Fed president Richard Fisher also holds an optimistic view on oil and the Texas economy.
"One of the things that I strive to correct is that Texas is not just oil," he told CNBC's "Power Lunch" on Tuesday.
Fisher said 150,000 jobs were created in the state last year and major job-producing sectors are not in the energy space. While that category is important to the Texas economy, Fisher said, "it just doesn't stop us from moving forward."
In fact, only 2.5 percent of Texas' employment and about 12 percent of its output can be attributed to oil, gas and mining, according to Fisher.
While Houston may be facing a slowdown, he said that job growth in Dallas is at 4.2 percent and at 4.3 percent in Austin. In fact, he said consumers are benefiting by lower oil prices.
"The rest of the state is prospering," he added. "So this is a very diversified economy led by hospitality, tourism; health care is huge, business and financial services very large, and the predominant real activity is coming from construction statewide."
Fisher said although Houston has been a great leader in the state economy, investors should remember that Texas is not defined by a single city.