According to recently release U.S. Commerce Department data, the U.S. mining sector, an industry that encompasses those who drill for oil, lost more money in twenty fifteen than it earned during the previous eight years.
As reported in the Wall Street Journal, last year’s collapse in oil prices led to the significant. Crude oil prices declined from around one hundred and ten dollars a barrel during the middle of twenty fourteen to less than forty dollars per barrel by the final days of twenty fourteen.
All of a sudden, all of those new wells that had been drilled in prior years were operating at a loss. Other mining operations were impacted by the decline of other commodity prices, partially the result of weak growth in emerging nations like China and Brazil.
Mining was hardly the only industry to experience weaker profitability due to a sluggish global economy. While the manufacturing sector remained profitable in twenty fifteen according to Commerce Department data, aggregate earnings slipped. The U.S. manufacturing industry generated a bit more than five hundred billion dollars in profit last year, down from more than 600 billion dollars a year earlier.
