Global business news twenty four hours a day. If Bloomberg dot Com the radio plus mobil and on your radio. This is a Bloomberg Business Flash. Sharron, Bloomberg World Headquarters. I'm Charlie. Tell it a little change for US stocks holding close to records. The SMP five hundred index now unchanged, eight town industrials down six little change there at eighteen thousand five D twenty three. Nastack is up twelve points to fifty two twenty six. The record for Nastack fifty
two twenty eight. So we're looking at a game right now of two tens up one percent, the tenure of fourteen thirty seconds, the yield one point five four percent, Gold up five seventy the ounce the thirteen forty two, a gain of four tents up one percent, and crude oil down seven tens of one percent, falling twenty nine cents of barrel forty two seventy two right now on West Texas Intermediate Crude. I'm Charlie Palotan. That's of Bloomberg Business Flash. This is taking stock with Pim Box and
Kathleen Hayes on Bloomberg Radio. When you think of Louisiana, perhaps you think about Martin Gras and New Orleans, or perhaps the oil and gas industry, or indeed even culinary delights or a painting by Edward Dega about the Cotton Exchange. But here to tell us more about Louisiana and its economy is Don Pearson. He is the Secretary of Louisiana Economic Development. They're based in the state's capital of Baton Rouge. Don Pearson, thank you very much for being here. You're welcome,
pinned great to be here at Bloomberg Studios. What is the state of Louisiana to you? Well, we're a diverse state, one that is rapidly developing into a global energy hub, and we've had a lot of success in oil and gas. Uh. Certainly we're known for that commodity prices. It sounds like there's an upward tick. They're glad to hear that as well.
But to day, there's an actual industrial revolution going on around the chemical industry, and we have twenty five billion dollars of announced projects in our state, with approximately sixty five billion of that under engineering and permitting and and
perhaps the early stages of construction. So this low oil price is a low feedstock price and a low energy price to these major chemical corporations, and they're taking advantage of that spot in the market in a state that's rich with ports, pipelines, rail infrastructure, and the ability through these ports to reach global markets. Well, the oil price
right now, sorry, not going your way. It's down about half a percent right now, down about twenty four cents on the n imax seventy eight cents for a barrel of crude. Give us some examples of the company, for example, IBM, perhaps and some of the initiatives that you have helped put together that have encouraged IBM to come to Louisiana. Well,
thanks for bringing that up. We are strong in our traditional oil and gas industry, agriculture, forestry, those types of programs, but what we want to do is also position the state in aerospace and aviation and I T and some water management issues are also some things we have an
interest in. But through a great incentive program and through a great workforce training program, we've had outstanding success with companies like IBM, C s R, A, c g I, and GE Capital where we're managing to bring the university system and UH these programming and software solution companies together and UH, with a very focused effort on workforce development, provide to them the kinds of folks that they need to be successful. And so we're experiencing great growth there.
What if let's say someone was the chief executive of a technology company, or indeed even an oil and gas company or some services business, and they were interested perhaps in expanding. What would they learn from calling Don Pearson at the Louisiana Economic Development Well, they learned that we can provide to them a complete concier service to evaluate
market opportunities. Once we know listen and understand what their goals are and what the specific nature of their company is, we can message out to all sixty four of our parishes you would call them counties and identify available sites. We can demonstrate low energy costs, we can look into all the logistics that are important into UH building this kind of decision matrix and then make sure they're very aware of our low tax environment and our ability to
deliver a world class workforce. We just got our seventh Super Bowl trophy last week, UH, the award for the number one workforce training program in America. We're quite proud of it. Tell us how it works well. It's a comprehensive solution. And that again, we'll listen to the needs of the company. UH. That then we'll recruit, will screen the people that we've recruited, looking for the right attributes, the right attitudes, h a fit with the company's culture.
Will then give the company an opportunity to identify inside that universe of people the folks that look right to them to go forward with training. Will conduct pre employment training, and we'll do that in a manner that's copyrighted to the company, so all of their materials has kept confidential,
all the things that are proprietary and important to their process. UM. On day one, we'll deliver that work force, and then we will stay with the company over time, not to just give you the people you need on day one, but to have a steady pipeline of the skill sets, the certificates, or the degrees that are are necessary to
be a successful employee in the company. Talk about success, Uh, success with a seamless steel tube mill in Shreveport plus an eleven billion dollar ethane cracker complex in in Lake Charles. How did those come about? Um? Certainly we were in a global competition and a stiff US competition for the Bentler steel plant that's located at the port in uh Catto Parish in the environment of street Port, Louisiana. UM. One of the interesting things around that was to convince
a German company that we could deliver the workforce. You have to appreciate that in Germany, uh the young people start an apprentice program, probably in junior high school. So when you look across to America and say, well, how are you going to provide a workforce without those kinds
of programs, it really had them raising their eyebrows. We were able to package a comprehensive solution with the construction of a twenty million dollar training center on a community college campus, dedicated to them for the short term and to our industry in the long term. Thank you very much for joining us and sharing this information. Don Pearson is the Secretary of Louisiana Economic Development Program l E ed Fast Start much appreciate it. He's based in the
state's capital of Baton Rouge. This is taking stock. I'm pim Fox and this is Bloomberg coming up. Get ready for some new satellites. We're gonna be speaking with the chief executive of Iridium Communications and find out about a new venture with SpaceX that's next