The economic bad news just keeps on keeping on.

The decline in the mineral industries was undoubtedly the biggest news story around here for last year, as I noted here earlier:

Today In Wyoming's History: 2015 In Review:  It hasn't been my habit here to do end of the year reviews, and indeed there are no doubt more items on Medieval history on this site than there are on the year 2015.  So, this is an exception and departure from the norm.  Perhaps it will become the custom, or perhaps not.  We will see.

This year I'm doing one, however, as this year has really been an exceptional year for Wyoming, and not at all in a good way, but in a way that has been somewhat predictable.  We entered an oil crash.

Early Wyoming oil field.

Now, oil crashes aren't new to Wyoming, but this one may prove to be unique and a watershed.  Only time will tell, but the evidence sort of eerily suggests that it might be. . .

Well, now it's 2016 and the news so far this year is headed in the same direction.

Earlier this week the Tribune revealed that Wyoming natural gas production declined 14%, a fall which was the sixth annual fall in a row for Wyoming gas.  It isn't that production is down nationally.  It's up.  It's down here, and the price is down.  Indeed, it's likely down here as production is up nationally.   Wyoming has a lot of natural gas, but so do a lot of other places in the United States.  Added to this, for various reason, coal bed methane production is really down.

Added to this, Wyoming producers are now starting to shut in wells, according to the Tribune.  That isn't a good sign, but with Saudi oil falling to $35/bbl last week, perhaps that's no surprise.

And then last week coal took another blow.

When coal started to decline in Wyoming there were a lot of local backers of the industry who maintained that "clean coal technology" would pull  the industry out of the hole, or maybe if the Federal government slacked up on one thing or another.  I haven't been hearing that recently and I think a sense of realism about these things has set in.  It must have set in within coal consuming industries themselves as we learned today that Pacific Power is backing a bill in Oregon that would require power generation to switch over from coal to gas in the Northeast.  Pacific Power is one of the largest consumers of coal in Wyoming, and if they're backing move away from coal it's telling.

Coal is already at its lowest production figures since 1986, although I don't think those 1986 amount s seemed bad at the time.  Coal exports, moreover have dropped way off, something like 40%. To add to it, coal production overseas has dropped way down, as foreign markets in some localities have switched to other fuels.  That might not seem related, but if foreign production is dropping at the same time ours is, it naturally will reflect itself in a diminished export market.

At the same time, Wyoming governmental budgets, both statewide and locally, are in trouble.  Casper appears set to have deficit spending to a degree next year, although oddly enough that didn't keep Casper from funding an above appraisal purchase of some downtown property for an anticipated civic plaza.  Perhaps the thinking is that this is a wise move in this climate, as it will encourage downtown reconstruction and innovations, which if so is an example of the sort of surprising New Dealish type of economic action that I wrote about recently here.

And locally, Wolfords Shoe Store, in business for 80 years, closed.  Business had dropped 44% over the last year as work slowed down locally, and the family that owns the store decided the time had come to close it.  The store had focused heavily on work boots in recent years, although it had always sold them.  A pair of Red Wing boots I got there lasted me for decades.