Texas Business reports: Texas has been ranked the top exporting state in 2011 for the 10th year in a row, according to data released by the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Texas Business reports: A large portion of Galveston Bay is now open to the harvesting of oysters and other molluscan shellfish after DSHS testing in those areas shows shellfish are safe to consume. 

Texas Business reports:  CORPUS CHRISTI—Uranium Energy Corp completed a second uranium sale which will be reflected in the company's upcoming fiscal 2012 Q2 report. 

Texas Business reports: A Dallas firm won a $9.4 million contract to design and build an Army maintenance facility in Corpus Christi.

Texas Business reports: Texas factory activity increased in January, according to business executives responding to the Texas Manufacturing Outlook Survey. The production index, a key measure of state manufacturing conditions, rose from 0.2 to 5.8, suggesting growth resumed this month.

Texas Business reports:  CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas & VANCOUVER, BC—Uranium Energy Corp. and Cue Resources Ltd reached an agreement in which UEC will acquire all of the outstanding common shares of CUE.

Texas Business reports:  COLLEGE STATION – Thanks to rains, more of Texas transitioned from exceptional to extreme drought, or from severe to moderate, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

Texas Business reports:  FARGO, N.D. – Border States Electric is consolidating resources in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas.

Texas Business reports:  Satterfield & Pontikes Construction Inc. completed construction of three new Walmart Supercenters for about $37.8 million in Corpus Christi.

 Texas Business reports: COLLEGE STATION – Many areas received rain, but the general consensus from weekly reports by Texas AgriLife Extension Service county agents was that more is needed to keep wheat and winter pastures going.

Texas Business reports:  An Ohio firm won a $937 million contract to support the Corpus Christi Army helicopter engine repair and overhauls, the U.S. Department of Defense announced.    

Texas Business reports: SOUTH PADRE ISLAND—An exotic, large species of shrimp is being found once again in the Gulf of Mexico and posing a potential threat to the $700 million Gulf shrimping industry, according to Tony Reisinger, a Texas AgriLife Extension Service agent for coastal and marine resources in South Texas.

Texas Business reports: COLLEGE STATION—As many as 500 million trees scattered across the Lone Star State have died this year as a result of the unrelenting drought, according to preliminary estimates from Texas Forest Service.

A dam in Central Texas' Blanco State Park, one of 7,500 in the state, the highest total in the U.S. Photo courtesy of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.

AUSTIN – Possum Kingdom Lake, northwest of Fort Worth, was created when the Morris Shepard Dam was built in 1938 to harness the Brazos River. It was the first water-supply reservoir in the state. Once a major hydroelectric generating facility, the dam became the first to surrender its operating license in Texas in 2007, when turbines that generated an estimated 22,500 kilowatts of electricity were disabled. There’s no talk of taking down the dam and freeing the river, though. Unlike the United States in general, drought-prone Texas is keeping the dams it has.

Texas Business reports: ALICE—Forbes Energy Services Ltd.  and certain of the company's subsidiaries entered into a purchase agreement with Dirivera Investments LLC and RGV Holding S.A. de C.V. covering the sale of substantially all of Forbes Energy's assets currently located in Mexico as well as the company's equity interests in Forbes Energy Services Mexico Servicios de Personal, S. de R.L. de C.V. for aggregate cash consideration of $30 million.

Leon David Cotham of Corpus Christi received U.S. Patent 8,066,206 for “Backpack Feeder.”

Texas Business Patent Of The Day:  A South Texas man has devised a way for hunters to take feed to remote areas. Leon David Cotham of Corpus Christi received U.S. Patent 8,066,206 for “Backpack Feeder.”

Texas Business reports:  Export-supported jobs linked to manufacturing account for an estimated 6.5 percent of Texas’ total private-sector employment. Over one-quarter (27.6 percent) of all manufacturing workers in Texas depend on exports for their jobs (2009 data latest available), according to the International Trade Commission. 

Texas Business reports:  ROBSTOWN, Texas—State and federal transportation officials unveiled a 10 foot by 10 foot highway sign today in Robstown, marking the first segment of Interstate 69 in Texas and the first new interstate highway in Texas since 1992.corp_

Texas Business reports: Amid reports of the nation’s weak economic recovery, high unemployment and slow job growth, attention has turned to Texas, the only large state on track to surpass its prerecession peak employment by year-end, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. 

Texas Business Reports:  The U.S. economy entered a financial-market-driven recession in December 2007 from which it has yet to fully recover. The boom of the mid-2000s has been replaced with a stubborn national reality of high unemployment and sluggish output growth, with no clear indication when economic activity will return to more normal levels, according to Jason Saving of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. 

Texas Business reports:  COLLEGE STATION – Cold fronts brought rain, from a trace to 2 inches or more, to much of the state during the last week, according to Texas AgriLife Extension Service personnel.