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BATON ROUGE — Area Development magazine recognized Louisiana for one of the nation’s best economic development performances in the past year by presenting the state with a 2020 Silver Shovel Award. The 2020 Gold & Silver Shovel Awards honor states that create the most significant impact from 10 leading investment and job creation projects during 2019.

This is the ninth time in 11 years that Louisiana has won the Silver Shovel Award. The magazine gives weighted scores for high-valued jobs per capita, the amount of investment, the number of new facilities and industry diversity. Projects submitted by Louisiana represent more than $7.2 billion in capital investment and 1,800 new direct jobs.

Local projects include South Louisiana Methanol’s $2.2 billion methanol complex in St. James Parish, Valero/Diamond Green Diesel’s $1.5 billion alkylation and renewable diesel projects in Norco, a $1.4 billion investment by Methanex for a methanol plant in Geismar and Shell Chemical’s plans for a $1.2 billion manufacturing expansion at Geismar.