Friday, February 25, 2011

Memo to Jim: This is Sioux Country

Someone sent me a memo to send to Jim Cramer at CNBC's Mad Money. I'll see that he gets it.

Today, Friday, February 25, 2011, Jim Cramer had two long segments on the Bakken, one before a commercial break, and then a second segment after the commercial break.

The first segment was on the Bakken itself and the producers he liked: Hess, EOG, CLR, WLL, BEXP, and Oasis.

The second segment was on other ways to play the Bakken:
  • NOG: unique business model
  • HAL: fracking
  • CRR: fracking ceramics
At the end of the show he gave a shout-out to the "North Dakota State Bison" which was wonderful, but it is the University of North Dakota that has a closer connection to the oil industry in North Dakota (at least as far as I know).

All core samples are sent to UND. This is a great story. I won't paraphrase it. I will let you enjoy the story; it's another great story due to North Dakota visionaries many, many years ago.

It's from UND's Discovery On-Line edition, May 4, 2010.

From the article:
Considering how much the supply and price of crude oil impacts the global economy, one of the world’s most valuable rock collections might be located at the University of North Dakota in the Wilson M. Laird Core and Sample Library.
The shelves of the library’s voluminous, climate-controlled warehouse are stacked nearly to the ceiling with long boxes containing cylindrical rock cores and smaller boxes of pulverized rock cuttings taken from virtually every oil well drilled in North Dakota’s Williston Basin, making it a one-of-a-kind resource.

“We’re probably the most complete state collection in the U.S.,” said library director Julie LeFever.  “Most states have some form of repository similar to this, but they’re not as complete.”

Operated by the North Dakota Geological Survey, the library is the state repository for information on what lies beneath the state’s surface.  About 90 percent of the material stored here deals with oil exploration, but there are also core samples related to U.S. Air Force missile silos, Red River Valley geology, landfills and coal bed methane, among others.

2 comments:

  1. Thanks, Bruce, for the Fighting Sioux shoutout! UND has also started a petroleum engineering major, and has long-standing majors in related fields like geological, chemical, environmental, and mechanical engineering. The core library is associated with geology department, which is well respected in the west.

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  2. I would have completely missed the story if you had not alerted me to it.

    I've always wondered about the library; I was vaguely aware of it, but had neglected to look for it.

    Thank you for giving the impetus to look for it. What a great success story!

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