Beautiful Bakken Evening -- Metrics -- Idle Ramblings -- The Bakken, North Dakota, USA

For investors worried about the EPA putting a stop to the Bakken: this is not rocket science. Split your hydrocarbon energy investments into two piles: one pile is for the Bakken; the other pile is for Big Oil (XOM, COP, and CVX).  Adjust the relative size of the two piles based on your reading of the "tea leaves." If it appears the EPA is going to stop the Bakken in its tracks, move your chips in the Bakken pile to your chips in Big Oil's pile. Big Oil doesn't have much in the Bakken, and with the end of fracking in the states, the price of oil will spike, going to Big Oil's bottom line. Of course, stopping the Bakken in its tracks (i.e., killing the domestic onshore oil industry) will push the US into a recession, if not a depression, but that's another issue, and above my pay grade. See disclaimer at the right; this is not an investment site.

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I just got back from a great walk in the Bakken. It was dusk when I started and pitch black by the time I returned. I walked along the Little Muddy, crossed 1804, and then crossed the railroad tracks to put me on the dike headed to the Missouri south of Williston. It was clear -- easy to see the evening star, Venus, on the way back home, no wind, no precipitation, and it must have been 50 degrees when I started out. A gorgeous evening. I noted a flare just west of the US Army Corps office along the dike -- memo to self, check out that well -- would it be 18311? That's the only one in the area; it has to be. Hard to believe it is still flaring; it was completed in December, 2009.

• 18311, 2,769, BEXP, Williston 25-36 1H, Catwalk, Bakken, cumulative 161,000 bbls; yup -- still producing 5,000 bbls/month and flaring all natural gas. Amazing. Two years of flaring. Price-wise, not worth capturing the natural gas, but it is interesting.

I spooked a flock of Canadian geese that had bedded down for the night. You could tell by their honking they enjoy the flaring also; they know they are home.  One can still end up in the wilds of North Dakota within minutes of walking despite all the oil activity.

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There have been quite a few articles written and a lot of chatter about the population of Minot and Williston going forward. It dawned on me that tracking the population is probably not the best metric to track. Would one rather have a city of 100,000 with 20 percent unemployment or 10,000 with full employment?  Would one rather live in a city where the average automobile was the equivalent of a Ford Focus or any mid-size sedan, not to pick on Ford, or the equivalent of a Ford F350 pickup? It will be interesting to track the population, partly because it's so easy, but I think a better metric might be dollars in building permits per capita or sales revenue per capita. Saying Williams County has sales receipts that nearly match those of Cass County grossly underestimates the true significance of those numbers.  The population of Williams County: 22,000; the population of Cass County: 150,000.