The reason this story is important because of where the growth is: just west of Minot.
"Everyone" has been counting Minot out as a big player in the Bakken because it seems to be a bit too far east. But there have been hints that "everyone" might be wrong.
The linked story concerns Berthold, a small town 22 miles west of Minot. Everybody in Williston who has driven to Minot knows Berthold; once we got to Berthold, we knew we were almost to our Minot destination.
Here's the story:
Berthold is enjoying its last days as a small, sleepy community as city officials wonder how they are going to cope with a population explosion looming in the immediate future.
Mayor Alan Lee said that Five Stone Development is moving along with plans to place a subdivision just north of the city that in all likelihood will increase Berthold's population by 60 percent immediately.
The initial phase involves about 200 to 300 homes, [a spokesman] said, but it might not end there.
"Ultimately, (the company is) talking 2,200 homes," he said. "Wow. If everything goes right, he's hoping to have between 300 and 600 this year (2012)."I have hear rumors that the Bakken might extend farther east in two small "streams" east of the generally-accepted Bakken.
ST MARTIN laid in one of the layers of shale oil now being mined in North Dakota, while the Red Wing laid in another...the oil companies have determined that the oil is layered, and at leaST two of the largeST layers, do not communicate. This means that the oil was accumulated into shale from different times. In effect these layers can be properly characterized as chronologically old, and younger from an event much closer to our time.
ReplyDeleteST MARTIN was near 7 times larger than Red Wing, if the data from the database is accurate. The distance from ND to ST MARTIN is mice nuts when you consider the speed of super cavitating waves, racing outward from a blasts local impact and able to travel at or above 10km per second. As stated elsewhere on this thread, nucleation occurs within the vacuum of the traveling wave, its distribution is determined by many variables, among them are the original size & speed of impactor, type of impactor, local strata, and the time to completion of its energy cycle. We have calculations about certain effects of these cryptoexplosions..but certainty about even the data produced from those extrapolations is suspect.
A 40 kil impactor might release the energy equivalent of 7 billion, Hiroshima explosions.....any thoughts about explosions of that size, are difficult, the effects of said blasts reduce to a single bottom line, nothing survives, everything changes.
Nucleation is the only certainty, from these cryptoexplosions. Oil and other minerals are juST by products of the many variables, known and unknown..
I don't think people are counting out Minot of the oil boom. I think many people were just getting tired of some Minot leaders claiming Minot to be the Oil Industry hub of North Dakota, and a couple years back, even tried to hijack "oil capital of ND", which in turn Tioga had it trademarked for their community (and rightfully so) Minot WILL be a small oil hub for its area of the Bakken, but in all seriousness, it will not be the main Oil hub like Williston or Dickinson. Job Service ND statistics are a good read. If you look into which communities employ and have grown the most oil field businesses and employees, Minot has not really shined when even comparing to smaller communities like Stanley and Watford City. I know it is hard to swallow for some Minot leaders, but they are NOT the oil capital of ND. Not trying to make this a Minot vs. the rest of the western part of the state, but in a way, some of their leaders started it. I wont go into details, but all a person needs to do is go to www.nd.gov and then job service nd. There are all kinds of charts and statistics in the demographics area of the site that shows comparison charts for wages, types of businesses by industry, employees working in a particular industry, growth, etc... in order of Oil Industry jobs, employees, companies... In order, Williams, Stark, McKenzie, Mountrail, Dunn, and then Ward.
ReplyDeleteAnd interestingly enough, Williston, especially the west side, is perfectly positioned for the activity in 2012 which is going to be just across the river (McKenzie County) and east toward Watford City.
DeleteI agree Bruce. I asked someone from Halliburton why Williston has become such a huge hub for them. Probably not true, but he said they drew a circle around the area that is considered the lucrative activity areas of the BAkken, and Williston was smack in the middle. Access to the Bakken is no greater than or less than 150 miles from Williston. From a staging point, that is ideal for the majority of oil service companies. If you locate on the edge, you may have to drive up to 300-400 miles one way. From Williston it is 150 miles a little more or less. It just makes economic sense to locate your hub that can reach areas of the Bakken with the shortest distance for drivers and equipment.
ReplyDeleteObviously the geologists will tell me that it was more than just serendipity, but for me, I find it quite remarkable that this "basin" was named the "Williston Basin" many years ago, well before any of this was known -- considering that the first oil was discovered nearer Tioga, and the basin could have just as easily been named the Tioga Basin or the Dakota Basin or the Great Inland Sea Basin.
DeleteThank you for such a great comment; much appreciated.
Hi I'm hearing they have had oil shows in Hill county. Not a lot going on there. But I see the Exshaw shale, is west of the Bakken. Talk of The Bakken, three forks and white speckled running west towards Alberta on the North section of Montana
ReplyDeleteMy hunch is there were a lot of rivers, streams running into that great inland sea. Your note helps. Thank you.
DeleteI also here halliburton are about to do a JV with a company called Iofina in that area
ReplyDelete