WSJ on North Dakota Jumping to #2 in Oil Production

Link here.

This is a huge story, taking up a prominent location on page 3 of today's print edition of the WSJ, more about that later.

The leap past Alaska came "substantially earlier than we thought. We had graphed this out [to happen] early next year," said Ron Ness, president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council, which represents more than 350 companies in the state's oil fields.

In four years, oil output has quadrupled in North Dakota. In March 2008, the state was the No. 8 oil-producing state at 144,000 barrels a day.

But since then, new technology called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has allowed companies to access the roughly 4.3 billion barrels of crude believed to lie in the Bakken shale beneath parts of North Dakota, Montana and Canada. 

Yes, anyone who expected North Dakota to jump to #2, expected it to happen not earlier than later this year at the earliest. This story is as much about North Dakota's view of energy development as it is about the federal government's view. 

To some degree, I was a doubter; I honestly thought Alaska/federal government would get its house in order and beef up production.  But that was in my emotional arena: I never thought I would live to see the day North Dakota would become #2 in oil production. But in my reality arena, it was obvious it was going to happen.

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Hey, on a completely different note.

As some of you may or may not know, Google and Microsoft "search" are in a heated battle for eyeballs. Google, of course, is the 800-pound gorilla and I doubt Bing will make much of a dent, but its viewership has increased significantly over the past year or so.

This a.m. I tested both.

I read the print edition of the WSJ whenever I can.  When traveling, I can read it on-line but I have never activated my on-line edition even though I get that feature free with my paid subscription to the WSJ.

If one goes to the on-line WSJ to read an article, without a paid subscription, one can read a few paragraphs of the story, but that's it. It turns out that if you google the exact headline of the WSJ story, it will take you to the full story, courtesy of something called "Google reader," a relationship that Google has with WSJ.

I knew that, but was curious if Microsoft's Bing would/could do the same thing. It can't. You get the first three paragraphs of the WSJ story and then it requires a paid subscription (or more correctly, a password) to get to the full story).

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And, then, on a completely different note. Speaking of that relationship between Google and the WSJ.

I'm not a big fan of Facebook, but it is the 800-pound gorilla among the social networking sites. (Google and Facebook are in different cages.)  If Google search, Microsoft Bing's Snapshot, YouTube, and Facebook, all merged into a more professional-looking (business-oriented Facebook), it would be my go-to page.

I love keeping up with family and friends, but I would also like to view other sites within the same, seamless, environment. I think Apple's IOS/iTunes model would be perfect for such an all-encompassing site.