Tagged: industry

NAPOLEONVILLE — Ascension Parish officials have reopened a four-mile section of highway near an acre of swampland that liquefied into soupy muck, toppling tall bald cypress trees and bending a 400-foot-long section of a natural gas pipeline toward the liquid acre.

The Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission says the fall inshore shrimp season will open at 6 a.m. Monday, Aug. 13.

The opening covers the state's inside waters from the Atchafalaya River and Atchafalaya River Ship Channel west to the Louisiana/Texas state line. The state inside waters from the Atchafalaya River east to the Mississippi/Louisiana state line will open 12 hours later, at 6 p.m.

The commission set the season Thursday.

The Navy plans a Saturday christening for the USS Somerset, the last of three ships named for sites of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The amphibious landing transport is named for the Pennsylvania county where the hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 crashed after passengers fought back against a terrorist takeover.

The 684-foot-long Somerset is the final ship to be built at the Huntington Ingalls Shipyard in suburban Avondale. The yard is scheduled to close in 2013; its workforce has been cut nearly in half since 2010.

Authorities say a three-alarm fire that broke out early Sunday morning at the Valero refinery here did not cause any injuries or force any evacuations.

The Times-Picayune reports that the fire broke out in a crude unit of the former Murphy Oil refinery at about 1:45 a.m. and was extinguished by 7 a.m.

Valero spokesman Bill Day says there were no injuries and that the fire did not cause any environmental concerns. Nearby roads were closed briefly.

Day says a damage assessment was being done and that the cause of the fire is under investigation.

Executives of offshore oil and gas fleet provider Tidewater Inc. told shareholders Thursday that prospects are bright the company's African market.

The Times-Picayune reports more than 90 percent of New Orleans-based Tidewater's fleet of oil and gas service vessels operates abroad. The largest concentration is in waters off sub-Saharan Africa, where Tidewater stations 132 vessels, about half its fleet.

Chief Operating Officer Jeff Gorski told shareholders attending the company's annual meeting that Africa is expected to continue to be a leading market.