Sunday, October 16, 2011

Three More CBR Oil-Loading Facilities -- Southwest North Dakota -- Zap, Dickinson, Fryburg -- The Bakken, North Dakota, USA

Late last week I mentioned that I had updated the string of Whiting wells in the Belfield area. Now a story about the CBR oil-loading facilities in this part of the state.

I often refer to Whiting's "north" Bakken ops (the Sanish field) and the Whiting's "south" Bakken ops (around Belfield).

Don alerted me to the story last week, and I forgot to post it.

This will be a bit of a geography lesson.

The PSC is getting ready to act on a request for a pipeline that will run right down the "spine" of the Bakken: from Tioga in the north (the center of the Bakken, and where oil was first discovered), under Lake Sakakawea, to Fryburg, (west of Belfield) where a crude-by-rail (cbr) oil-loading facility is scheduled to be built.

The pipeline is part of the BakkenLink Pipeline system.

There is a second CBR oil-loading facility being built west of Dickinson; these two facilities are part of BNSF's southern route through North Dakota, paralleling I-94. The CBR facility west of Dickinson is being called the Bakken Oil Express (Lario's BOE website).

A third CBR oil-loading facility is being considered for Zap (located about fifty miles northeast of Dickinson). Zap is well east of where I would expect a CBR oil-loading facility. It's either in KOG's southeastern-most prospect or just outside it.

The fact that the Zap CBR is on the periphery of the Bakken in this area suggests there is more going on than what the "general consensus" has been saying.

All three CBR oil-loading facilities (Zap, Dickinson, and Fryberg) also speaks volumes about Whiting's southern ops business plan. What is most confusing is why the need for more oil-loading facilities this far south when Lynn Helms keeps telling us that pipeline and rail capacity already exceed what is needed (at last as I interpret his comments).

It certainly suggests there is a huge power play going on between pipelines and railroads for oil transport.  Who wudda thought?

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