Random Top Ten
1. Most prescient: Harold Hamm, of course, cannot be outdone for his prescient views on the Bakken.
2. Second most prescient: ONEOK
3. Best example of a company in the Bakken re-defining itself: Enbridge
4. Luckiest guy in the world (with ties to the Bakken): Warren Buffett
5. Most spectacular example of rebirth of a ghost town: Dore, North Dakota
6. Best location for new truck stop: two miles south of Alexander, North Dakota
7. Worst weather forecaster: those fuzzy little caterpillars last autumn that predicted another horrendous winter in the Bakken
8. Possibly Whiting's bet on the Three Forks in southwest North Dakota; was the Pronghorn Sand discovery the result of great scientific work or just plain lucky?
9. Original oil in place (OOIP): early on, it was "courageous" to suggest 150 billion; then, it became acceptable to make business decisions based on 300 billion; now (late 2011), some are suggesting 900 billion.
More to follow.
More on these later, perhaps, and if I remember.
While the NY Times rails on about how few drilling jobs there are (and totally neglects the huge positive effect that low nat gas prices are having on manufacturing, as well as the coming truck --> nat gas converstion, as well as the impact on steel, railroad, transport, chemical equipment, pumps, instrumentation sectors), another big story due to drilling:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.costar.com/News/Article/Shell-Taps-Pittsburgh-Area-For-Proposed-$2B-Chemical-Plant/136756
Shell Oil Co. has picked a site in Beaver County, PA over locations in two other states for a proposed $2 billion petrochemical complex that could create more than 10,000 permanent jobs and another 10,000 construction jobs.
Shell Chemical LP signed a land option agreement with Horsehead Corp. to evaluate the site in Potter and Center Townships near Monaca, PA, about 35 miles northwest of Pittsburgh. The facility would include an ethane "cracker" that would upgrade locally produced ethane from the Marcellus Shale, a sedimentary rock formation that extends through much of the Appalachian Basin of North America and contains vast untapped gas reserves.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich and West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin aggressively courted the project. Shell said it continues to assess the commercial feasibility of a petrochemical complex in the Appalachian region. The next steps for the project include additional environmental analysis of the preferred Pennsylvania site, the company said in a release.
Thank you for taking time to comment, even though I temporarily brought down the "NYT" story post. I brought it down to put a Bakken story at the top. Now that the Bakken story is back on top, I will put up the NYT story again.
DeleteYou are so correct; great comment. I've talked about the "tipping point" with regard to the US natural gas national corridor. Just a matter of time. I think we will see the tipping point may be as early as 2013.
One gets the feeling, "we" are just ready to see a huge breakout in the US energy industry. Timing looks very, very good.