Record Rigs Reverberating in the Rockin' Bakken

The record number of active drilling rigs in North Dakota continues to reverberate in the local newspapers. This is the story in the Williston Herald. my hometown newspaper.

Several decades ago, I was editor of the Williston High School paper and worked closely with the Williston Herald which printed our school paper. That was one of the best things I ever did in life.

In other news, Bismarck Tribune, dateline, Cheyenne, Wyoming: "in need of water, oil industry taps city water hydrants."

Dickinson Press: "...estimated the state will generate more than $1 billion a year in production tax revenue going forward."

From that article:

However, the federal government has something in the works that, if approved, could paralyze North Dakota’s oil patch. Hydraulic fracturing, a high-pressure tactic used to extract oil from rock formations, is at the heart of developing the Bakken Formation. Lynn Helms, director of the state’s Department of Mineral Resources, said it has been proposed that the Environmental Protection Agency be put in charge of hydraulic fracturing.

I first started reporting on this one or two years ago. Some folks blew me off as being alarmist. I worked with government bureaucrats for thirty years and I knew that once a federal agency started putting together PowerPoint slides on any issue, it was just a matter of time before we felt major repercussions, some good, some bad. And some really, really bad. Look what the gulf moratorium has done to Louisiana.

In the Minot Daily News, Enbridge and Fort Berthold have resolved zoning issues. It was resolved the usual way. Cash. $275,000. Also here in the Bismack Tribune: the headline uses the word "offer." Other words come to mind.

The only North Dakota newspaper (on-line) where the record number of rigs was not easily found was the Fargo Forum. However, there is a headline story in the Fargo Forum on Bristol Palin, "Dancing With the Stars."  Wasn't there just an editorial in one of the eastern papers about the North Dakota East-West Divide? Smile.

And that's a wrap for the morning.