Saturday Morning Links -- Just Getting Started

Updates

March 18, 2013: the story below about Chicago workers moving to the Bakken for jobs; the story had a by-line from Williston; it was linked at Drudge Report today (Monday, March 18, 2013). 

Original Post

I am so busy this a.m. .... so much to post ... and so little time this morning.... of course, I'll eventually get to it, even if I have to work late into tonight, but I like to get things up as fast as possible.

So, fewer comments right now, and just some great links.

First, one reader sent in these three stories. They are really, really exciting; nice stories:
Dakota Plains Holdings of Wayzata and a partner are spending $50 million to build looped tracks to rapidly load trains. Think of the great video posted yesterday: the Reuters video: the Bakken Oil Express west of Dickinson.

North Dakota fracking lures Chicagoans. This site requires one to sign in, but not a paid subscription, as far as I can tell. But it's a bit of a pain. I just saw the headline before I got the annoying sign-in request. I will come back to it later (if I remember).

Minnesota businesses are booming along with the Bakken boom.

A huge "thank you" to the reader for sending these links.

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Other Links

I don't invest in Rosetta, nor do I follow Rosetta, but every once in awhile I run across the company, especially when checking in on Montana oil and gas industry. So this story caught my eye: Rosetta buying Comstock's properties in the Permian. For $768 million:

The acquisition covers about 53,300 net acres. The Reeves County assets include about 40,200 net acres and 74 producing wells. Total current net production is about 3,300 barrels of oil equivalent per day, of which more than 73% is oil. Rosetta said it projects significant growth potential in the area and the company will be the operator of the majority of the Reeves County assets.

The Gaines County assets cover about 13,100 net acres, with multiple exploratory opportunities for the area, Rosetta said.

Quick, back-of-the-envelope: $768 million / 53,300 acres = $14,400/acre which includes current production: 3,300 boe @$50/boe = $60 million/year. 

Energy boom in west Texas, Great Plains fueling economy, the lede (as usual, starts with the Bakken):

The boom in Bakken and Permian Basin oil and gas activity helped fuel population growth in North Dakota and Texas from 2011 to 2012, the U.S. Census Bureau reported Thursday.

Midland, Texas ranked as the fastest-growing metro area from July 1, 2011 to July 1, 2012, with population growth of 4.6 percent. Neighboring Odessa, Texas, ranked fifth, with Casper and Cheyenne, Wyo., and Bismarck, N.D. ranked among the top 20 fastest-growing metropolitan areas.

"After a long period of out-migration, some parts of the Great Plains – from just south to the Canadian border all the way down to West Texas –are experiencing rapid population growth," said Thomas Mesenbourg, the Census Bureau's senior adviser and acting director, in a statement. "There are probably many factors fueling this growth on the prairie, but no doubt the energy boom is playing a role. For instance, the Permian Basin, located primarily in West Texas, and North Dakota accounted for almost half of the total U.S. growth in firms that mine or extract oil and gas, during a recent one-year period."

I used to refer to this strip from western North Dakota to west Texas as the "US energy corridor"; the "energy backbone of the US"; the "US renaissance corridor" or variations thereof. 

The story also goes on:

In micropolitan areas, which contain an urban cluster of between 10,000 and 49,999 people, Williston, N.D. topped the list of fastest-growing cities with 9.3 percent. Dickinson, N.D. ranked third among fastest-growing micropolitan areas with 6.5 percent. (So, who was 2nd? If it was in the article, I missed it.)

I'm not sure why this has not been updated:

In 2011, North Dakota was the fourth largest crude oil producing U.S. state, accounting for more than 7 percent of U.S. oil production, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). A 35 percent increase in production from 2010 to 2011 was primarily driven by horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing in the Bakken formation.

EIA expects U.S. crude oil production to keep growing rapidly over the next two years, growing from an average 6.5 million barrels per day in 2012 to an average 7.3 million bpd in 2013 and 7.9 million bpd in 2014. Drilling in tight oil plays in the onshore Williston, western Gulf of Mexico and Permian Basins, is expected to account for the bulk of that forecasted production growth, EIA reported in its March 12 Short-Term Energy Outlook.

North Dakota is now #2 among the states in crude oil production, accounting for about 12% of all US crude oil production.