Transportation Costs For Fracking Sand From Wisconsin -- August 26, 2014

From a reliable source, data points, regarding shipping fracking sand to the midwest from Wisconsin, from one dispatcher:

• a slow week: 60 semi-loads
• a busy week: 120 semi-loads
• delivery cost from mid-Wisconsin to northeast Colorado: $175/ton
• shipping by truck because NO available trains 

The number of semi-loads is irrelevant to the degree of activity in the Bakken; the number of semi-loads is relevant because it provides a large enough denominator/data base to suggest the price of shipping is not an outlier for this dispatcher.

That is the cost to a central delivery and storage point. Additional costs will be incurred for picking up the sand at the terminal and delivering it to the drilling site.

A typical Bakken well uses 4 million lbs of sand, or 2,000 tons = $350,000 for long-haul transportation.

Companies are trying to get average cost of well down from $8 million to $7.5 million, ball-park figures; they vary dramatically, but that gives newbies an idea of cost of drilling/completing a Bakken well. The range is probably $6 million to $13 million/well. This does not include the less expensive wells near the Canadian border. I have no idea what they cost.

Disclaimer: this is all "idle chatter." I cannot vouch for accuracy but it's what I'm hearing, and what I've read. It could be wrong. In fact, some of it probably is. Mostly because folks will disagree on what a "typical" Bakken well is.

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Global Warming

Coldest August night on record in Ireland.

Breaks record for the entire month of August.

A new record for the coldest August night was set on the night of 23rd/24th August for Northern Ireland.

The Met Office said temperatures plunged to a bone-chilling -1.9C (28.6F) at Katesbridge, Co Down, beating the previous record of -1.1C at Loughermore Forest in 1964.

Note: This wasn’t just the coldest in Katesbridge, it was the coldest on record across all of Northern Ireland.

At some point ... 

But back in the day, when there really was global warming, it was a hot August night.

Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show, Neil Diamond
This was nowhere near my favorite Neil Diamond song but it connects with that concert. It was always Neil Diamond for me on the radio driving between Blacktail Dam and Williston, back in 1969.