Morning Notes -- October 5, 2011 -- Bakken, North Dakota, USA

1. Jobless report. Ooooohhhh.....ouch....not good. September layoffs biggest in two years.

The number of planned layoffs at U.S. firms in September jumped to its highest in more than two years due to heavy cutbacks by the military and Bank of America, a private report on Wednesday showed.

The spin is interesting: "It is important to keep in mind that 80,000 cuts, or nearly 70 percent of last month's total, came from just two organizations: Bank of America and the United States Army," John A. Challenger, chief executive officer of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, said in a statement. "Neither of these cuts is directly related to recent softness in the economy."


2. The traffic in Williston between 6:30 a.m. and 7:00 a.m. is incredible. Simply no other word for it: absolutely incredible. Busy, busy, busy. Someone asked me last night if I am sad to see Williston changing the way it's changing. I replied: "I like to see people working."

3. The tidbit from elsewhere regarding Strandahl oil field that I posted last night provides a little insight for all those folks who say that companies won't be able to get to their leases before the leases expire. I've always opined that oil companies know how to manage their leases, and the tidbit from Strandahl suggests just that.

4. Stark County budget is released. The Stark County budget remained absolutely flat; in fact, with the cost of doing business in the oil patch, I would say that the budget is ... well, depressing. Dickinson't is the county seat of Stark County. That's the city that recently turned down a 600-bed man-camp that could now move eight (8) miles north into Dunn County.

[County commissioner Duane] Wolf was concerned that Stark County didn’t get its fair share during the last oil impact distribution.


“We go from $4 million to $100 million (in oil impact grants) and Stark County got nothing,” he said. “We have the impact and we don’t have the oil production and we get nothing. That just doesn’t seem right.”

Wolf added after the meeting that many of the oil operations have employees that are living in Stark County communities, but working in other counties.

And, it sounds like the Dickinson't folks want to sent those folks to Dunn County.

5. 199 active drilling rigs in North Dakota this morning, two shy of the record. I've heard rumors about the number of rigs going forward but not at liberty to say. But I post this so I can have the time-date stamp when the "rumors" are made public.