Is Bismarck The Site? Two Headlines That Should Scare The Hell Out Of US -- October 15, 2014

I will close the most recent poll in which we asked where you thought the $4 billion plastics plant would be sited in North Dakota. I suggested Fargo would be #1 on the list and was wrong, wrong, wrong, and readers told me that immediately. [Remember: I specifically left Fargo off the list because I was so sure Fargo would be #1 -- shows you how little I know about manufacturing little plastic beads -- speaking of which -- if these little plastic beads could be made as hard as ceramic ....? Just joking.]

Here are the results of the poll (won't quite add up to 100 due to rounding):

• Carrington: 4%
• Jamestown: 18%
• Devils Lake: 4%
• Grand Forks: 9%
• Bismarck: 31%
• Minot: 33% 

Strong indications are it will be Bismarck. A huge thank you to a reader for providing the link. I assume that the company could still be looking but based on information provided by readers, Bismark-Mandan seems the best bet.

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Is The Bakken A Pipe Dream? -- SeekingAlpha

Link here. This story is likely to be available through subscription only at a later date.

There are several shale deposits in the United States, which are believed to contain very high amounts of oil. The most famous of these are the Bakken Shale formation in Montana and North Dakota and the Eagle Ford shale formation in South Texas. In 1999, Leigh Price, a geochemist with the United States Geological Survey, estimated that the Bakken Shale contained between 271 and 503 billion barrels of oil. In April 2008, the North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources estimated that the portion of the Bakken Shale that is in North Dakota alone contains approximately 167 billion barrels of oil.

Unfortunately, not all of this oil can be extracted using current technology. Estimates of how much can be extracted vary widely, but the United States Geological Survey estimates that a total of 7.4 billion barrels of oil can be extracted from the Bakken and Three Forks formations in aggregate. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the Bakken and Three Forks formations have total combined reserves of 2 billion barrels of oil. The Eagle Ford Shale in South Texas is similarly massive.

According to the Energy Information Administration, the proved reserves of the Eagle Ford Shale are 1.25 billion barrels of oil and 8.4 trillion cubic feet of gas. 

The oil that is found in these formations is much more difficult to extract than the oil found in more conventional deposits such as those found in Saudi Arabia or the Permian Basin. This is due to the geological characteristics of the regions. In tight oil deposits such as the Bakken, oil is encased in low permeability rocks. In order to extract the oil, the rocks must be broken apart. This is a technique known as hydraulic fracturing. In addition, accessing this oil typically requires the use of directional drilling techniques, which is a blanket term used to describe drilling an oil well in any direction other than vertically.

As might be expected, the difficulty of accessing this oil results in these wells being significantly more expensive to drill than a more conventional oil well. According to Morgan Stanley Equity research and the International Energy Agency, it costs $65 on average to produce one barrel of oil from North America's shale plays like the Bakken.

This estimate is supported by other sources. This makes producing oil in these areas more expensive than producing anywhere else in the world except from tar sands and in the Arctic.

The article has several flaws and several bad assumptions, but there are some interesting data points.  Regular readers of the blog will pick up on them immediately.

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Two Headlines That Should Scare The Hell Out Of US

1. Second case of Ebola in Dallas from case #1 who came into the US from Ebolaland.

2. ISIS takes huge military base (unverified).

But the stories should scare US for two different reasons.

First: Ebola should be controllable / manageable in the US. The US is not west Africa. With Ebola, the only fear we have is fear itself. Unfortunately, we don't have an "FDR" in the White House. According to Gallup, 60% of Americans may agree with Jim Cramer who (on CNBC this morning) said the country is "leaderless."

Second: ISIS. I doubt many Americans are following this story. In fact, over at FoxNews (on-line) right now, not one story on ISIS -- except maybe deep down, one of the smaller headlines that few will even see. CNN is doing a better job reporting on ISIS/IRAQ. It's hard to believe that air strikes alone will turn this thing around. If ISIS streams into Baghdad -- like the Nazis streaming into Paris -- it will mark a huge turning point in the geo-political structure in the entire Mideast. The question at that point becomes whether ISIS will be happy with Iraq, or will be they be interested in more? History has shown how these questions are generally answered.

The younger generation won't remember how the Vietnam War ended for US: a) the president was picking bombing targets; and, b) US loyalists were air evacuated out of Saigon on helicopters.

Update, October 15, 2014, 1:28 p.m. CDT: it is being reported that US launched 23 air strikes October 14 - 15.  Again, the source is not reliable. But if accurate, that's amazing. That suggests that the coalition is running out of targets and/or 20 strikes in a 24-hour period is about the maximum that President Obama can manage by himself. I was on active duty in the Air Force during the US war on Afghanistan -- we ran out of targets very, very quickly. The same for ISIS: Toyota trucks with mounted armament, etc., do not represent a target.

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More To Follow

I  have no idea how reliable this web site is; I'm not even sure who "runs it." But if this is accurate, a) Drudge Report will pick it up; and, b) it should scare the hell out of US.  It should be noted that CNN has not verified this story. CNN is confirming that ISIS has pretty much taken the entire province of Anbar where this base is located, and that the Iraqi Army is generally unable to stop ISIS. Something called "IraqNews" is reporting that the third largest Iraqi military base was taken by ISIS:

On Monday Iraqi military sources confirmed the fall of the military base of Hit, which includes a training camp and the base of the seventh division of the Iraqi army, after a major attack of the organization ISIS, using suicide car bombs and rocket-propelled grenades.

The military sources said that “the organization ISIS attacked the army base in Hit, the third largest military bases in western Iraq, from several axes, and carried out a series of suicide attacks on the walls of the base by car bombs, as well as a missile attack lasted about an hour which led to the storming of the base after the withdrawal of the army from it. “

In a related context, lieutenant colonel, Rahim Aljughaifi said that “ISIS  have seized the contents of the base and the training camp, including tanks, heavy weapons, munitions and stores, as well as spare parts and different military supplies,” adding that “the army had requested help of the international coalition during the attack on the base, but the latter did not respond’, asserting the control of ISIS on the three towns surrounding the base.”

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Meanwhile, From Ebola Ground Zero (US)

A second individual in Dallas who cared for the first Ebola patient ever in the US has tested positive for Ebola.

For newbies, I live in the Dallas-Ft Worth metroplex. The big news coming out of Dallas is this: the local state health department in Texas can test for Ebola, but the CDC requires that samples be sent to Atlanta, GA, for testing. The locals say that sending samples to the CDC delay getting reports back to Texas.

Of course, conspiracy theories will start. Let's think about this. If you are the head of the CDC, and a sample in your laboratory comes back positive, who is the first person you are going to call? Yup, President Obama (obviously his staff will take the call, and who knows who will take the call if it comes in at 3:00 a.m. but that's another story). The first think the White House will say: "Hold that story -- hold the results -- until we can get a statement prepared. Give us 6 hours." The patient is already in isolation; holding the results for 6 hours won't make a difference medically, but the White House needs to get ahead of this to prevent panic in the street. Just saying.

Newbies to this site should be sure to read the welcome/disclaimer.

By the way, it now turns out that the second nurse who contracted Ebola called the CDC (the CDC confirms the calls) several times to ask if it was safe for her to fly despite the fact that she had a fever. Her temperature was 99.5 and because that did not hit the "risk factor" temperature of 100.4 she was "allowed" to fly by the CDC. Sources everywhere.