Potpourri -- The World Is Coming to the US For Energy;

Great, great 3-page article in Forbes: the world coming to the US for energy.  The Bakken is mentioned. I started this blog for several reasons: see "welcome" and "disclaimer" posts.  The tipping point for starting the blog occurred when one blogger (who is now no longer blogging about the Bakken) said the Bakken was being hyped/was over-hyped. He/she said that the amount of oil coming out of the Bakken would never amount to a significant dent in total world consumption. I agreed completely, but he/she was missing the point. The first point was that the Bakken was going to be a huge deal for 100,000 people in western North Dakota.  A lot of millionaires. A lot of development. A huge change in their lives. I was not worried about the amount of oil being provided for the world; I was interested in how this would affect western North Dakota where I was born and grew up. The second and bigger point that was missed by Snopes and others was that the Bakken has become the laboratory in which new drilling techniques were tested. It is amazing how far "we" have come from 1-stage fracking back in 2007 to 40-stage fracking now. There is so much more but it's beyond what I understand. The best example might be BEXP. I get tired of tinhorns who used "phony" and BEXP IPs in the same sentence. Not only were they "real" IPs, but they forced other operators to be change their methods of computing IPs because of pipeline  choke points. BEXP impressed Statoil enough to be bought by the latter, and a cursory reading of mainstream media suggests Statoil is taking the lead in new world exploration of oil and gas. Of course, XOM, CVX, BP, Shell, COP, are still out there, but every time I turn around (to coin a phrase) I see another article on Statoil.  As long as I'm rambling, it would be a mistake not to mention another big name in the Bakken: Continental Resources, and Harold Hamm, who by the way built his business despite government interference and over-regulation. He was probably the biggest promoter of the Bakken from the beginning, and was the individual most responsible for getting the USGS folks to re-look at the potential of the Bakken. If banks, investors, and venture capitalists are going to pour money into the Bakken -- and a lot of money is needed -- they need assurance from "someone" that the oil is there and is recoverable.

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Reminder: for local gossip with regard to the Bakken, stuff you would hear at the Economart, click here.  Bakken pricing, gushers, phony IPs. It's all there.

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Energy links at Independent Stock Analysis.

RBN Energy: the propane story, part II.

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I assume this has been posted/linked elsewhere, but just in case -- North Dakota is #1 in the us for economic growth, 2011.

North Dakota's economy is outpacing all other states, with continued growth in economic production, new jobs, rising wages and increasing export sales, leading economic indicators show.

North Dakota's gross domestic product, a measure of total economic production, increased 7.6 percent in 2011, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis recently reported.

Oregon had the nation's second best state economy last year, with a growth rate of 4.7 percent. Since 2000, North Dakota's economy has averaged an annual growth rate of 7.52 percent compared to the national economy's average growth of 3.9 percent during the same period.

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Popular Mechanics finds the Bakken: an old, old story, but fun reading. Popular Mechanics says North Dakota is the next hub of US energy.  By the way, this past week we saw on two successive days permits for as many as fourteen (14) wells in one section. This is not an anomaly. We will see more and more of it going forward. Agile investors and surface owners should start to anticipate what this will mean. When I see the word "hub" I see Cushing. If you don't know what I'm talking about, one can take two trips to see first-hand what it will mean. The first trip is a few miles to the southwest of Williston to see the Enbridge complex; the second trip is to Cushing.

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Huge technology story coming out of North Dakota: Pedigree Technologies, NDSU

“We track, monitor and diagnose our customers’ fixed and mobile equipment, and connect it to their mobile workers and corporate offices,” said Warner, adding that the technology allows customers to monitor their operations in real time.

“We’re like Facebook for machines,” he said, referring to software and hardware that enables machine-to-machine communication.

We'll see this in the oil patch (if it's not already there).

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From CarpeDiem, North Dakota leads nation in jobless rate, June: 2.9%.