Louisiana Ports Awash in ‘Dead Iron’ as Oil Manufacturing Drops
- Revenue at some generations-old companies plummets 80 percent
- Lafayette suffers nation’s largest over-the-year jobs decline
An abandoned drilling rig in New Iberia, Louisiana, on Aug. 19, 2016.
Photographer: Derick E. Hingle/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
Summer hung heavy over the bayou in Loreauville, Louisiana, as Vance "Vic" Breaux Jr. walked across an empty parking lot into a cavernous open-ended warehouse where a 205-foot-long aluminum-supply boat on order lay half-finished.
Breaux Brothers Enterprises, Inc. is finishing work on its only other active boat-building contracts, two for $12.5 million each. Generators and power tools are mostly idle, and employees, down to 30 from 90, no longer work Fridays. Competitors underbid him on a contract for the New York ferry system.