On the grow: Gov. Bobby Jindal joined Elmer Chocolate CEO Robert Nelson today to announce the company’s plans to make a $40 million capital investment and construct a 70,000-square-foot addition at its production facility in Ponchatoula. Louisiana Economic Development estimates the company will retain 164 existing employees with the expansion while creating 10 new direct jobs with an average salary of $42,500, plus benefits. LED estimates the project will result in another 14 new indirect jobs, and the company estimates the project will generate 130 construction jobs. The state is providing the company an incentive package that includes a performance-based $550,000 Economic Development Award Program forgivable loan to fund equipment purchases, among other incentives. LED has more details on today’s announcement.
The first to fall: Excelerate Energy’s Texas liquefied natural gas terminal plan has become the first victim of an oil price slump threatening the economics of U.S. LNG export projects. Reuters reports a halving in the oil price since June has upended assumptions by developers that cheap U.S. LNG would muscle into high-value Asian energy markets, which relied on oil prices staying high to make the U.S. supply affordable. The floating 8 million tonne per annum export plant moored at Lavaca Bay, Texas, advanced by Houston-based Excelerate has been put on hold, according to regulatory filings obtained by Reuters. The project was initially due to begin exports in 2018. Read the full story.
One thing leads to another: The hacked are itching to hack back. So say a dozen security specialists and former law-enforcement officials, who describe to Bloomberg an intensifying and largely unspoken sense of unease inside many companies after the recent breach of Sony Corp.’s networks. U.S. officials have shown little appetite to intervene as banks, retailers, casinos, power companies and manufacturers have been targeted by foreign-based hackers. Private-sector companies doing business in the U.S. have few clear options for striking back on their own. That has led a growing number of companies to push the limits of existing law to consider ways to break into hackers’ networks to retrieve stolen data or even knock computers offline to stop attacks, the cybersecurity professionals say in interviews. The FBI is investigating. Read the full story.
