More Good News From the Oil Patch: Bakken, North Dakota, USA

From the Bismarck Tribune online: the North Dakota budget -- the government anticipates $70 oil and a $1 billion budget surplus. North Dakota's two-year budget is slightly under $9 billion.

From the Dickinson Press online: the 1.6 million foot-long Bison Pipeline is nearing completion, dateline Bowman, North Dakota. This is a natural gas pipeline and a huge story.

The 30-inch-diameter pipeline will carry gas from the Powder River Basin of Wyoming to North Dakota, where it will connect with the Northern Border Pipeline and then on to Chicago for distribution to markets in the Midwest, for a total distance of 302 miles.

The project’s capacity is designed to carry approximately 477 million cubic feet per day.

The Bison Pipeline being buried. This photo was taken October 5, 2010, seven (7) miles north of Bowman. This is site prep for the Bison Pipeline, a 42-inch pipeline being put in by Transcanada, from Wamsutter, Wyoming, to Manning, North Dakota.

Updates 

October 30, 2010: Update on progress and taxes to the county.

A 302-mile pipeline that is being built across the southeastern corner of Montana will have little effect on the state — unless you happen to live in Carter County.

TransCanada Corp., the company building the $600 million Bison Pipeline, estimates that it will generate property tax revenues of $8.8 million a year in Montana when complete. And nearly all of the pipeline’s 97-mile route through Montana is in Carter County. It also passes through tiny slivers of Fallon and Powder River counties.

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This is another huge story, this time from the Minot Daily News online: Halliburton  will build a huge -- 38-acre -- site at the new Minot industrial park. It's all about fracking. More on that later. This new endeavor comes on top of a recently $20 million expansion of the Halliburton site in Williston.

Halliburton spokesman Brent Eslinger said his company intends to invest approximately $15 million for operational and maintenence facilities, parking areas and an administrative building at the Energy Park. Work is scheduled for completion in the first quarter of 2011. According to Halliburton, the facility will bring 250 jobs to Minot.

From the Williston Herald online: a nice story on the boom that a Bakken town is experiencing.

My Home In North Dakota, Adam Taylor
From the Billings Gazette online: Montana's unemployment rate rises to 7.4% -- more than double the rate in North Dakota.

NOTE: most of these stories will be available on the web for a short period of time. Many of them will not be accessible some weeks from now. The links will be broken. Googling the topic will generally find the an alternate source for the story.