Headlines From The Bismarck Tribune -- August 12, 2015 -- Part III

From The Bismarck Tribune today, a number of interesting stories.

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ONEOK Pipeline Update

$6 million pipeline project to reduce truck traffic, flaring. I haven't read the article yet. Let's take a guess. Rule of thumb: $1 million for a mile of pipeline. Let's guess this pipeline is 8 miles long; it's pretty easy to build a pipeline in North Dakota. Okay, now to the article. Wow, was I wrong!

A short pipeline project to move natural gas liquids from a gas processing plant under construction in McKenzie County to a pipeline interconnect would reduce traffic by 95 truckloads per day, according to Oneok Bakken Pipeline LLC.

Members of the North Dakota Public Service Commission approved the proposed $6 million Lonesome Creek NGL Pipeline, saying it also would help reduce natural gas flaring in the oil patch. The Wednesday vote on the project was 2-0; Commissioner Brian Kalk was absent.

Tulsa, Okla.-based Oneok is planning to build a 4-mile, 8-inch diameter pipeline in McKenzie County from its Lonesome Creek Gas Plant to an interconnect at its Garden Creek NGL Pipeline south of Arnegard.

$1.5 million/mile of pipeline.

A company official says the 200 million cubic feet per day Lonesome Creek Gas Plant is expected to be online by Dec. 1 and the pipeline to be built and ready prior to that.

I track ONEOK gas plants here. 

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Water Clause

Cooperative drops plans for Spiritwood fertilizer plant; I track the Spiritwood here; developers couldn't get "water guarantee" clause for the plant.

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Surface Owners Rejected

Dunn County Planning and Zoning Board rejects landfill proposal -- one that would have given surface owners more power. Dunn County if one of the four "big" Bakken counties: Williams, Mountrail, McKenzie, and Dunn. Northeast Dunn County is most associated with the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation.

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Meth Ring Broken Up In Minot

Meth ring broken up in Minot; glad to see it was not "inside" the Bakken

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Conceal Carry

Conceal carry, Minnesota / North Dakota: North Dakota and neighboring Minnesota have reached a deal to allow residents of one state to carry concealed weapons in the other, North Dakota Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem announced Wednesday morning.

I would think, it's getting to the point where we need a federal conceal carry permit law. All 50 states, plus Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Guam, allow conceal carry permits for their residents. Some have reciprocity. Some issue conceal carry permits to non-residents. The vast majority of states will issue conceal carry permits to residents and non-residents.  California is the only "may issue" state: California ranges from a no-issue in areas like San Francisco, to nearly shall-issue environment in rural counties.

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Do You Want Fries With That? 

Earning $15/Hour

Wow, this is really, really bad. Think about this. Thirty percent of New York's eighth graders passed the state-mandated literacy test. Thirty percent. But then note this. The test was not taken by 20 percent. One assumes the twenty percent that did not take it was because they were unlikely to pass it. Even if that is an inaccurate assumption, Woody Allen was correct when he said, "90% of life is showing up." Not taking the test is the same as failing it in the minds of many employers. (Actually, this is probably an overstatement -- some hyperbole on my part -- because the "20%" refers to not taking one or the other test -- one test was in reading, the other test was in math.)

So, of a 100 eighth graders, only 80 took the test. Of the 80 that took the test, 30% (actually 31%) passed. 31% of 80 = 25 students of every 100 eligible students passed the test. One also must assume that the test was not written for highest achievers. One wonders if one is looking at a 15% of New York eighth graders able to read at a level necessary to be successful going forward.

The good news is the cashier terminals at McDonald's use pictures, not words, and that gradually the cashier terminals will be replaced by customer-friendly kiosk ordering.

From The New York Times article:

Twenty percent of New York State’s third through eighth graders sat out at least one of New York’s standardized tests this year, state education officials said Wednesday, in a sign of increasing resistance to testing as more states make them harder to pass.

New York was one of the first states to introduce tests based on new Common Core academic standards, and this year, the third under the new benchmarks, just 31 percent passed reading tests and 38 percent passed math. Both results were slight improvements from last year, and far below the passing rates under the easier, pre-2013 tests.

While opt-out groups had estimated, based on surveys, that roughly 20 percent of the million-plus eligible test takers, or about 200,000 students, had declined to take the test, the figures released on Wednesday were the closest to an official count. They represent the percentage of students who did not take each exam and had no “known valid reason,” such as an illness, for sitting out.

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More Evidence That Global Warming Is On Hold

For The Archives

The Obama administration announced today that July was one of the cooler months in history in the US. July, 2015, was cooler-than-normal for the 3rd year in a row.