Worker Shortage Looming In The Bakken -- December 18, 2016

Updates

December 30, 2016: update or repeat. 
 

Original Post

 

From The Williston Herald:

The labor crunch in North Dakota continues, and looks to get more intense by mid-2017. Cindy Sanford, office manager for the Job Service North Dakota office in Williston, is on the front lines of oil and gas job recruitment in the area.

“Oilfield jobs are definitely on the rise,” she said. “We had Oil States here on Monday and Schlumberger for the first time here on Thursday.”

She’s seeing the largest upward tick for jobs in hydraulic fracturing crews, which average between 45 and 65 people per crew. Class A CDL driving jobs were already high, and continue to be so.

“We are seeing sign-on bonuses for Class A CDL drivers and some per diem coming back on housing,” she said.

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Wood Pellets In The 21st Century

Some entrepreneurs in the US are talking about a manned moon mission to Mars.

Meanwhile, the EU is burning wood pellets for energy.

It was mentioned on the blog back on October 22, 2015. Burning wood in the EU is considered "carbon neutral." LOL.

It must be a slow news day over at FuelFix this week: wood pellets fuel booming energy-related industry in southern US.

Parts of the South might be known for oil and gas production, but the region also is a mass producer of another lesser-known energy source: wood pellets, a biomass fuel.

In 2016, the South was the nation’s biggest producer of wood pellets, made of scraps from sawmills, logging operations and other wood product manufacturing. The U.S. is the world’s largest exporter of wood pellets, most of which are used for utility-scale electricity generation. Nearly all of the country’s wood pellets are destined for Europe, which accounts for 85 percent of the world’s wood pellet use.

Wood pellets are used for heating homes, but are mainly used by utilities in the United Kingdom, Belgium and the Netherlands.

Most of the wood pellets made in the U.S. head to the Drax Power Plant in northern England.

As we said about England when we were stationed there years ago: UK still living in the 1950's and working halftime to catch up.