Edging up: Louisiana’s public high school students performed slightly better on the ACT college readiness test in the most recent results, according to The Associated Press, continuing a trend of improvement for the last four years. The Louisiana Department of Education released the latest ACT scores today and the average composite score for students during the last school year reached 19.6, edging up from 19.5 in 2016. The average has gradually increased from 19.1 since the 2012-13 school year. Baton Rouge Magnet High School students—with a score of 25.6—are among students in 10 schools across Louisiana to earn ACT scores of 24 or higher on the test. The ACT measures how students perform in English, reading, math and science. A perfect score is 36. Read more.
Hiring soon: Three hundred new conservations jobs will open up in the next few years in states along the Gulf of Mexico. The Associated Press reports recruiting for the new GulfCorps jobs will begin in October and workers are expected to be on the ground in January. About $7 million in BP oil spill penalties will finance the new jobs for projects in Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. Meetings to discuss possible projects will begin on Friday. Workers will learn marketable restoration skills on projects that could include planting native vegetation, removing invasive species and repairing banks and shorelines, among others. There will be a total of 60 new jobs in each of the five states by 2020. Read more.
Increasing capacity: The energy industry’s capacity to export U.S. liquefied natural gas is set to increase nearly sevenfold over the next three years as companies bring gas super-cooling facilities into production. As FuelFix.com reports, the Energy Information Administration says the United States has exported more gas than it imported over the past few months, a trend the EIA expects to continue for the rest of this year and next year. The advent of shale gas has raised the nation’s production by a third since 2008. Five new LNG export projects, as well as rising capacity on pipelines to Mexico, will lift the nation’s export capacity from 1.4 billion cubic feet of gas a day at the end of last year to 9.5 billion cubic feet a day by the end of 2019. Read more.
