Parshall To Get A Motel; New Town To Get A Hotel -- Bakken, North Dakota, USA

Parshall: Northstar Homes of North Dakota, 100-room motel coming.

New Town: 50-room hotel; construction to begin before winter sets in; Karen Huber and Sandra Eagle, members of the MHA Nation, already own two hotels in Montana: the Sherman Inn in Wolf Point, and the Cattle King Hotel in Scobey.

Another 680 Units Planned for 60 Acres Northeast of Applebee's - Williston, Bakken, North Dakota, USA

I'm quite sure this link will be broken early, but the title says it all, except to note that the contractor is University Commons, LLC. The company says it may take 8 years to complete the subdivision but 70% could be completed within six years.

South Dakota Doesn't Think Oil Stops at State Line -- Chesapeake Thinks Bakken Oil Stops Well North of the SD State Line

Updates

April 28, 2013: The Rapid City Journal is reporting increased interest in oil drilling in Sturgis area; rigs being seen. Target? Precambrian. Very, very deep.


February 6, 2012: Apparently Chesapeake thinks Bakken oil stops well north of the South Dakota line; Chesapeake is said to be leaving North Dakota because wells are not economically viable in the southwest part of the state.

January 17, 2012: Sierra Club, other faux-environmentalists go to court to block proposed refinery in southeast South Dakota. At 400,000 bopd, this refinery would process as much oil as the new refinery being built by Chinese in Saudi Arabia (announced last week).

Original Post

For those interested in activity in South Dakota, click here and scroll to bottom of page.

Link here (regional links break early and break often):

But South Dakota officials believe there is potential for growth. Iles notes that, although South Dakota’s geologic setting is not quite as favorable as North Dakota, it nevertheless has many of the same rock units. A look at a cross-section of a geophysical log of the rock formations along South Dakota’s northern border shows the similarities.

At a drilling depth of about 8,000 feet, South Dakota has the Three Forks Shale, which Iles says is a large oil producer in North Dakota. Above that is the Minnelusa Formation, which only a county and a half north into North Dakota is producing oil, but there it is called the Tyler Formation. South Dakota also has the Englewood Limestone – a rock unit at the same depth in North Dakota is called by a different name, the Bakken Shale.

“We have similar rock units here, but we are just under-explored,” says Iles.

The Greenhorn Formation is currently the target of exploration near Faith, SD, after the city struck oil while drilling a water well in 2009. Nakota Energy is a small company doing some test drilling there; Pete Sutton with Nakota says they have drilled one well and are waiting on the results, and they will also have a look at the city’s water well where the oil was originally found. [Note: see first two comments -- Chesapeake has an interest in the Greenhorn.]

The first oil in South Dakota was discovered in Harding County in 1954, part of the Red River Formation.

Oil production in South Dakota today occurs in Harding, Custer and Fall River Counties. The Williston Basin lies mainly in North Dakota but comes down into northwestern South Dakota as well, though there is it shallower. A very small part of the Powder River Basin touches the southwestern corner of the state in Custer and Fall River Counties. Luff Exploration is the largest oil producer in the state today, followed by Continental Resources Inc.

For Every Two Cents in Subsidies to Big Oil, $1 to Solar -- Wall Street Journal

Link here -- Wall Street Journal subscription required for full article.

President Obama is expected to seek another $250 billion or so in new stimulus funds next week, with plenty of money for clean energy and the creation of so-called green jobs.

Never mind that no one can seem to find many Americans who got green jobs as a result of the original stimulus spending. Consider two stories.

In the 2009 stimulus, the feds gave nearly $3.2 million in green-energy grants to my county of Arlington, Va., with almost $300,000 used to install solar paneling on the roof of our local library. 

It really doesn't matter any more, but it makes a great story. $250 billion for solar won't create many jobs between now and the 2012 election.  And with the US now $10 trillion in debt, another $250 billion doesn't really matter. But it will play well for the president's base.

From Carpe Diem, quoting the article:

For every two cents of tax subsidies for 'Big Oil,' wind and solar get nearly $1. The environmentalists are for any energy source.... except those that actually work.

Weatherford's Request To Consolidate Operations Approved -- Bakken, North Dakota, USA

Link here (regional links break early and break often).

The Williston City Commission voted to approve Weatherford's proposed zone change to build a facility near Stony Creek Elementary School during a special meeting Thursday evening.

The company is looking to construct an office building on 80-acres of a 160-acre parcel of land on 133rd Avenue Northwest near the school.

I just got back from looking at the BEXP complex about eight miles west of Williston. I believe it sits on 160 acres, also. It has a brand new beautiful building that maybe takes up an acre with parking, access, etc. The other 159 acres: man-camp, pipe storage, truck storage, oil gathering operations.

Something tells me Weathorford is putting a bit more than an office building on 80-acres of a 160-acre parcel of land. If not, that's a huge 80-acre office building.

Peter Kiewit -- Bakken, North Dakota, USA

Updates

The story below features MDU/Knife River. It should be noted that Knife River opened a Western North Dakota Division earlier this year.

Knife River Corporation announced plans today to open a Western North Dakota Division with full aggregate, ready-mix, asphalt and concrete construction services. Headquartered in Williston, division employees will perform private and public work throughout western North Dakota and eastern Montana.

Original Post

Connecting some dots.

I will be posting a bit more on this company when I get a chance. Folks might be interested in reading about Peter Kiewit before I start posting.

For now, I will just mention that I'm noticing a fair number of yellow Peter Kiewit pickup trucks around Williston.

Peter Kiewit home page.

Wiki's page on Kiewit.

Kiewit Corporation, an employee-owned, private company, is a Fortune 500 contractor based in Omaha, Nebraska. It is one of the largest contractors in the world. Recent projects have included several bridge retrofittings in the San Francisco Bay Area, Interstate H-3 project in Hawaii, and building the world's largest geodesic dome at Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha.The company also has significant mining and off-shore operations, but also contracts small grading (dirt moving) projects for residential or commercial development.

From the Williston Herald, June 25, 2011, which I linked on that date:

Terry Metzler, North Dakota operations manager for Granite Peak Development, said Phase I of the project will fill 120 acres of the 289.5-acre, three-phase project.

"It will have 800-1,400 multi-family housing and apartment units and 155 single-family homes," Metzler said.

Located on the corner of 26th Street West and 35th Avenue West, the final two phases will bring the final number of housing units to 2,295. In addition, commercial space for restaurants, a gas station, convenience store and office space will be provided as well as 40 acres for a new school and acreage for a park.

One-half mile by one mile rectangle = 320 acresWith roads in, perhaps a minimum of 1,200 lots at 100' x 80'Those would be large single-home lotsMore likely 75' x 50'

"Four weeks" ago this area was still a farmfield. "Four weeks" later the topsoil has been removed, the lots staked, roads put in (hard dirt roads, not asphalt yet); water, sewer and electrical are put in (at least from what I can tell). All of this in less than two months.

For a PDF file on this new subdivision, click here.

“Kiewit Infrastructure Group will be doing the earthwork, Knife River will be doing all of the infrastructure such as water, sewer, streets and sidewalks, and Sanderson-Stewart is our engineering and design firm”, says Metzler. “I suspect Williston will see construction like they haven’t seen since the levees were built in the 1950’s”, says Metzler.

Someone needs to take an aerial photograph of this activity.

You Think The Government Is Going to Ban Fracking?

In Pennsylvania, Marcellus:

When Resick paid taxes on the lease-signing bonus in 2007 for gas drilling on her 300-acre farm, she was an early player in what has become a tax boon for the state. Lease and royalty income taxes totaled $17 million in 2007; that swelled to more than $100 million from 2010 earnings so far.

The state has maybe half of the collections still to count for 2010, according to figures from the state Department of Revenue.

Since the shale gas rush started in Pennsylvania in 2005, drillers have bored more than 3,700 wells into the gas-rich Marcellus rock layer, a mile or deeper underground, according to the Department of Environmental Protection. They have sought nearly 8,600 well permits through Aug. 12, the most recent statistics available. 

There's no way the government can afford to ban fracking -- that doesn't mean it won't -- but the government, neither the federal government nor the state governments, can afford to shut down fracking. The state budgets would be destroyed as well as hundreds of thousands, if not thousands of thousands of jobs related to the oil industry would be lost.


Today's astounding news that the president shut down the EPA's plan to further constrain the coal industry and the electric utilities spoke volumes.

Whiting -- Three Forks -- Marmon Wells - North Dakota, USA

For those of you who have been following Whiting's activity targeting the Three Forks in southwestern North Dakota, some folks have noticed low production numbers from a couple of Marmon wells:

Marmon 12-18TF produced only small amounts for three months and shows no production since October 2010. The drilling rig moved off sister well, Marmon 11-18TF, this past April, and received a tight hole designation on 8-30-11. 

It turns out Whiting is using at least one of the Marmon wells as a monitoring well:

Whiting is using the Marmon 12-18TFH for monitoring reservoir pressure and temperature. A notice in the well file states that Whiting ran five pressure and temperature guages connected to a fiber optics cable. Whiting requested approval to continue the monitoring until November 2011.

Wow, This Is Huge -- Corrected KOG/Injection Story From Yesterday -- Bakken, North Dakota, USA

There was quite a bit of buzz yesterday evening and earlier today with regard to KOG requesting a permit for injection in yesterday's daily activity report for two or three wells that were still on the confidential list. I was quite shocked to see that, but I figured "it was what it was" and we would see how it played out. But it looked very serious.

Well, today, NDIC corrected the story. It turns out the wells were listed in the wrong place on the reporting form. KOG is not asking to inject these wells; rather, they should have been listed under the section of the form for "Permit Renewal."  Here is the corrected report:

CORRECTION TO DAILY ACTIVITY REPORT FOR AUGUST 12, 2011 WAS LISTED AS PERMITTED FOR INJECTION. CORRECT LISTING IS PERMIT RENEWAL:

• #19505 – KODIAK OIL & GAS ( USA ) INC., CHARGING EAGLE 15-14-11-3H., SWSE 14-147N-92W, DUNN CO.
• #19506 – KODIAK OIL & GAS ( USA ) INC., CHARGING EAGLE 15-14-24-16H., SWSE 14-147N-92W, DUNN CO.
• #19508 – KODIAK OIL & GAS ( USA ) INC., EAST GRIZZLY FEDERAL 3-25-13-3H., NENW 25-148N-104W, MCKENZIE CO.

Huge news and very, very good news for everyone in the Bakken.

I guess this was another example if something doesn't seem right, it may not be right. Glad to see this.

Six (6) New Permits -- Bakken, North Dakota, USA

Daily activity report, September 2, 2011:

Operators: MRO (3), Denbury Onshore, Helis, and Petro-Hunt

Fields: Grail, Reunion Bay, Lonesome, Garden, Murphy Creek

It looks lik MRO has another two-well pad. Two more fields that I haven't seen before:Lonesome and Garden.

Seventeen (17) producing wells were completed and reported. Seven with an IP > 1,000:

• 19292, 1,358, XTO, FBIR Baker 34X-25, Dunn County
• 19293, 1,537, XTO, FBIR Walker 34X-25, Dunn County
• 19833, 1,458, MRO, Shirley Pennington USA 14-22H, Mountrail County
• 19845, 1,084, Petro-Hunt, Van Hise Trust 153-95-28C-21-1H, McKenzie County
• 19971, 1,337, Murex, Peggy Lee 31-30H, Williams County
• 19985, 1,073, Hess, En-Dobrovolny A-155-94-1324H-1, Mountrail
• 20122, 1,163, MRO, Skogstad 41-28H, Mountrail County

This was particularly important:

CORRECTION TO DAILY ACTIVITY REPORT FOR AUGUST 12, 2011 WAS LISTED AS PERMITTED FOR INJECTION. CORRECT LISTING IS PERMIT RENEWAL:
#19505 – KODIAK OIL & GAS ( USA ) INC., CHARGING EAGLE 15-14-11-3H., SWSE 14-147N-92W, DUNN CO.
#19506 – KODIAK OIL & GAS ( USA ) INC., CHARGING EAGLE 15-14-24-16H., SWSE 14-147N-92W, DUNN CO.
#19508 – KODIAK OIL & GAS ( USA ) INC., EAST GRIZZLY FEDERAL 3-25-13-3H., NENW 25-148N-104W, MCKENZIE CO.

Life in a Man-Camp --- Video -- Bakken, Williston, North Dakota, USA

Link here.

From DrudgeReport -- Panic: Administration Halts EPA Smog Regulation

Link here.

To say this is "interesting" is an understatement.

Now, if we can just put the Louisiana folks back to work.

Finally:

President Barack Obama on Friday sacked a controversial proposed regulation tightening health-based standards for smog, bowing to the demands of congressional Republicans and some business leaders.

Obama overruled the Environmental Protection Agency and directed administrator Lisa Jackson to withdraw the proposal, in part because of the importance of reducing regulatory burdens and uncertainty for businesses at a time of rampant uncertainty about an unsteady economy.

This may be the first bit of good news on the regulatory front that I have seen in some time.

By the way, what was EPA proposing?

The EPA under Obama proposed in January 2010 a range for the concentration of ground-level ozone allowed in the air — from 60 parts per billion to 70 parts per billion. That's about equal to a single tennis ball in an Olympic-size swimming pool full of tennis balls.

I can't make this stuff up.

Other headlines regarding the economy today:

Unemployment among blacks highest in 27 years. The smog rules would have done away with jobs that would have worsened the unemployment rate, and perhaps disproportionately among minorities.

The August jobs report was dismal for plenty of reasons, but perhaps most striking was the picture it painted of racial inequality in the job market.
Black unemployment surged to 16.7% in August, its highest level since 1984, while the unemployment rate for whites fell slightly to 8%, the Labor Department reported.

The proposed smog rules would have resulted in rolling blackouts.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, operator of the state's power grid, said in a report today that a new federal environmental regulation would reduce generating capacity and put the grid "at increasing risk of emergency events," including rotating power outages.

The Jan. 1 implementation date for the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, designed to curb air pollution from power plants, leaves ERCOT with "an extremely truncated period" in which to assess the impact of the rule and "no realistic opportunity to take steps that could even partially offset the substantial losses of available operating capacity," it said.

This simply suggests folks making decisions are in over their heads.

Life in the Oil Patch -- Excellent Reporting -- Also: Two More Man-Camps in Dickinson -- Bakken, North Dakota, USA

From the oil patch:

"I'm making more now than I would've if I would've gone to college," Austin says. As the sun sets behind him, the sky turns a hazy pink.

"I was going to go to school for alternative energy - and here I am in the oil field.

"So much for solar panels."

Ah, yes, solar energy. The link to the story from which the above quote comes from is here.

The lede:

WILLISTON, N.D. -- You can almost smell the opportunity along Highway 2. It oozes deep from the sloping North Dakota prairie where oil derricks and natural gas wells sprout among the drying rolls of hay.

People come here hopeful, drawn by the promise of jobs. But they probably also utter a few prayers, or expletives, when they realize just how far from home this place really is.

Or when they see the makeshift villages of narrow metal-sided buildings rising from the plains - temporary housing to accommodate what many are calling the largest oil boom in recent North American history.

Read the story; full of great quotes and observations from the West.

Also, two more man-camps in Dickinson, North Dakota.

Crude-by-Rail Hub -- Dickinson -- North Dakota -- Soon To Be Completed -- Bakken, North Dakota, USA

Link here (regional links break early and break often).

A 300-acre rail hub near Dickinson will begin operating at the end of the month, according to Wichita, Kan.-based Lario Logistics LLC, which owns the facility.

Bakken Oil Express LLC will receive crude oil from the Bakken and Three Forks formations via pipelines and trucks. The oil will then be loaded into unit trains for further transportation to out of state markets, said Gerald O’Shaughnessy, chairman of Lario Logistics and BOE.

“In October we’ll accept more oil and by the end of October the project will be completed and we’ll be able to accept as much as the facility capacity at that point, which is 100,000 barrels a day,” he said.

The facility is located west of Dickinson on 115th Street Southwest and the Burlington Northern Santa Fe mainline.

Net US Jobs Added Last Month: Zero. Nada. Zilch.

Link here.

The US economy created no jobs and the unemployment rate held steadily higher at 9.1 percent in August, fueling concerns that the US is heading for another recession.

It was the first time since World War II that the economy had a net zero jobs created for a month.

Drudge called it the bleakest report in 12 months.

I can hardly wait for the next jobs program speech. I'm being serious. It will be an opportunity for a break just before the NFL football season opener.

By the way, even NASCAR has scheduling conflicts; more than half the field will be unable to attend the president's invitation "for a photo op" due to their own scheduling conflicts. I can't make this stuff up.

National Economy -- Not a Bakken Story -- For Folks Interested Only in the Bakken Skip This Post -- This Is For My Personal Archives

First time jobless claims: 409,000. For newbies, the critical milestone is 400,000.
The figure remains higher than it was three weeks earlier, before the labor dispute at Verizon pushed the numbers up.

US productivity declined at an annual rate of 0.7 percent in 2nd quarter, a bigger drop than the 0.3 percent decline reported a month ago.

They argue that the economy can tolerate a brief period of weaker productivity growth if it means that companies have reached the limit on the amount of work they can squeeze out of the existing work force and begin hiring back the millions of workers laid off during the recession. That would boost income growth and result in stronger consumer demand which they hope will drive the economy to a faster expansion.

During the recession and immediately afterward, productivity soared with worker efficiency rising at an annual rate of 4.1 percent last year, the strongest performance in eight years. Economists at JPMorgan Chase are forecasting that productivity this year will grow by just 0.7 percent.

It's now the Obama economy. 

Only a third of all Americans approve of how President Barack Obama is handling the economy, according to a new national survey.

Let's See? What Else Can the Federal Government Do to Slow The Economy? -- Not a Bakken Story

So far, and these are just the big ones that come to mind:

Permitorium in the Gulf.

Suing to stop Boeing's new plant in South Carolina.

Suing to stop ATT from buying T-Mobile.

Slow-rolling the Keystone XL pipeline.

Now today, it is being reported that the government will sue "the big banks" for housing mortgage misrepresentation.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency suits, which are expected to be filed in the coming days in federal court, are aimed at Bank of America,  JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and Deutsche Bank, among others, according to three individuals briefed on the matter. 

No wonder the banks are not lending money. It should be noted that the rules for lending going forward are more stringent / onerous than the ones under which these banks loaned money before the housing debacle. 

For investors, Jim Cramer says "never" invest in airlines. I think he is about ready to add "big banks" to that list. The timing of this story is interesting. Warren Buffett just made a huge investment in Bank of America. He could have waited a few days and got an even better deal.

Unrelated, I did post an op-ed on electric cars. 

Oh, well, we'll see the jobs report later this morning and that will cheer everyone up.

Meanwhile, I'm waiting for the Bakken day to begin. Good luck to all. And have a great three-day weekend.