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Somerset CC faces a financial crisis that will see 1,500 jobs go and the abandonment of almost all building projects

by Randy Rieland.

If we hadn’t spent the summer watching crude gush into the Gulf, no one outside the industry would have noticed or cared much about Thursday’s explosion on a Mariner Energy oil platform.  No serious injuries, no spreading slick.

But everyone did notice, and it reminded us that no matter how much BP and the rest of Big Oil say they’ve learned from the Deepwater Horizon disaster, offshore drilling remains a high-risk business, even in shallow water. 

Despite the dose of optimism Friday's jobs number brought to Wall Street, the backbone of US employment remains weak at best.

Investors looked set to enter the long weekend on a high note, riding an encouraging jobs report to send the stock market to its best pre-Labor Day week in two decades.