Answer to Question #107717 in History for Lay

Question

How did Louisiana's political leaders respond to the oil bust of the 1980s?

Answer 1

When a major oil supply glut in the early 1980s spread across the globe, combined with political unrest and economic jockeying in the Middle East, the price of petroleum plummeted, throwing thousands of New Orleanians out of work and casting a gloomy economic pall for years to come. By March 1986, the oil bust had caused Louisiana's unemployment rate to hit 13.2 percent, the highest in the country and nearly 6 percentage points above the national average.

It would take two decades for the regional petroleum industry to regain firm footing, a process helped along by a spike in deepwater drilling activity in the Gulf of Mexico in the 1990s and then in natural gas production about 10 years after that.