North Dakota Getting Ready To Test CO2 EOR In North Dakota; The Super-Rich Don't LIke Paying Taxes Either -- February 9, 2015

Getting ready to test CO2 injection this summer in North Dakota. Bakken.com is reporting:

This summer, North Dakota’s Energy and Environmental Research Center (EERC) will test the technique of using carbon dioxide for advanced oil recovery on its first commercial oil well, reports The Bismarck Tribune.

This trial will be used to determine how much more oil and gas can be recovered by implementing the process.

...  the technology has been used in the past, but on an older well. However, he thinks that use of the process could begin much sooner and added that the EERC hopes to begin carbon dioxide testing on a well drilled within the past five years.
The project will begin by testing one well. The program hopes to expand and believes a multi-pad well site would be ideal for future trial runs. 

The Lignite Research Council, in partnership with EERC, suspects that coal-fired plants will be top providers of carbon in the near future as carbon emission reduction requirements are put into effect.

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No One Likes Paying Taxes; Some Can Afford To Move

Florida, Texas Are Nice This Time Of Year

The is AP reporting:

If you're a billionaire living in Connecticut, chances are the tax department is keeping an eye on you.

In a state home to some of the richest Americans, tax officials go to some lengths to keep them — or, more accurately, keep the billions of dollars in revenue their income taxes generate.

Connecticut tax officials track quarterly estimated payments of 100 high net-worth taxpayers and can tell when payments are down. Of that number, about a half-dozen taxpayers have an effect on revenue that's noticed in the legislature and Department of Revenue Services.

Two years ago, tax officials were alarmed that a super-rich hedge fund owner might leave and reduce the state's income tax revenue. They set up a meeting and urged the unidentified taxpayer to stay. The effort was partly successful, with the taxpayer leaving Connecticut but agreeing to keep the hedge fund here.

Yesterday I ran into an individual whose company recently relocated to Southlake, Texas (just up the road from where we live) from San Diego, California, specifically because of the state corporate taxes.

I track the states here.

Back on April 30, 2014, CT Mirror was reporting:

Plummeting tax receipts have ripped a nearly $300 million hole in the next state budget, leaving legislators and Gov. Dannel P. Malloy just one week to fix it, according to a new report Wednesday from fiscal analysts.

Meanwhile, proposed new spending for pre-kindergarten programs, the elderly and working poor, public colleges and universities, and for cities and towns hang in the balance – as do tax breaks for teachers and consumers and the potential expansion of legalized gambling in Connecticut.

New projections from the administration and the legislature’s nonpartisan Office of Fiscal Analysis also worsened the deficit in the first budget after the November election, pushing it close to $1.4 billion or 7.4 percent of annual operating costs.

Meanwhile, the $500 million-plus surplus Malloy touted just two months ago when he proposed a tax rebate has disintegrated to $43 million.

More recently, from the CT Post,

Unilateral cuts of nearly $50 million ordered by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy in November have resulted in a smaller projected deficit in the fiscal year that runs through June 30.

But there remains a lingering $31.6 million shortfall in the $20 billion budget.

Budget shortfalls of $59 million over the last month, including a $40 million shortfall in the Medicaid program due to federal reimbursement issues, have been offset by savings of $72.2 million in various state programming accounts, most importantly a $65 million reduction in debt service payments resulting from low interest rates.

One more reason why Janet Yellen is resistant to raising rates. 

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Prioritizing

There are only so many dollars; only so many hours in the day; only so many bureaucrats; only so many meteorologists -- it seems resources would have been better spent preparing for the winters we've been seeing the past several years and the one we're experiencing now than diverting all those resources to preparing for an ocean that is rising at the rate of 0.01 inch per decade, or whatever it is.

The mayor talks a good talk, saying he's going to keep the subways open no matter what. But CBSlocalBoston is reporting:

Gov. Charlie Baker is “frustrated” and “disappointed” with the MBTA as it struggled to maintain even a limited schedule during Monday’s snowstorm.
The MBTA announced that all rail service will be suspended beginning at 7pm Monday night due to the snow. Rail service will be suspended all day Tuesday while maintenance crews continue to clear snow and ice from tracks, the third rail and switches.

The snow is bad but the freezing weather and ice yet to come (at the end of the week) will be even worse. A lot of folks are going to be delayed (and some will completely miss) getting to the global warming meetings being held on college campuses throughout the greater Boston area this week and next.