Drilling descent: Oil and gas jobs in Louisiana have continued to plummet in the state, sinking to their lowest levels in almost a decade, The Advertiser reports, citing figures released by the Louisiana Workforce Commission on Tuesday. Louisiana’s mining and logging sector, which includes many oil and gas jobs, lost 300 jobs in June and has dropped 6,000 this year. That brought the total number of mining and logging jobs to 47,700, the lowest in the state since May 2006. The oil and gas sector job losses were a negative aspect of a mostly positive jobs report—based on figures from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics—which showed sizable growth in other job sectors. Overall, unemployment in Louisiana dropped from 6.6% in May to 6.4% last month. Read the full story.
Flying high: General Electric is in the middle of a week of drone-guided tours of its manufacturing facilities that pump out equipment for the various sectors of the energy industry, broadcasting the footage live on Twitter through the social media platform’s Periscope app. FuelFix.com reports the company kicked off the campaign in Houston, at its factory near George Bush Intercontinental Airport where it manufacturers blowout preventers, the three-story tall pieces of equipment that act as the final barrier to ruptured offshore oil wells. GE’s new blowout preventers will be deployed for Denmark-based Maersk Drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and at wells around the globe by the end of 2018. Read the full story and check out the drone footage of the new equipment.
One thing leads to another: The selloff in gold is infecting metal markets from copper to zinc and tin. “Commodities are not in vogue,” Daniel Briesemann, an analyst at Commerzbank AG in Frankfurt, Germany, tells Bloomberg by e-mail. “The speculative financial investors are still withdrawing from the markets. The weakness of the precious metals prices is spilling over to the base metals.” Copper, zinc and lead fell more than 1%. The worst losses were in tin, which fell as much as 4.9%, the most this month. Gold futures retreated for a 10th day in the longest run of losses since 1996 as Goldman Sachs Group Inc. predicted further declines and investors sold more through funds. The Bloomberg Commodity Index of 22 raw materials touched a 13-year low this morning, dragged down by declines in metals, grains and oil. Read the full story.
