Black Friday -- Links; Too Big To Fail -- The Teamsters Pension

Jobs report: horrendous. Market plummets. So much for all that talk about ending quantitative easing. Barry to Ben: do more!

RBN Energy: crude loves rock'n'roll -- east coast delivery terminals.

Last June (2012) the largest refinery on the East Coast was on the brink of closing - in part due to higher international crude prices (versus US inland grades).
Since then the 330 Mb/d Philadelphia Energy Solutions refinery has reopened and along with several of its competitors the new owners have developed means to get access to lower priced crude from North Dakota and Western Canada using rail. 

Today’s episode of our continuing crude by rail series is a survey of East Coast rail offloading facilities. The first episode in this series provides an introduction and overview of the “Year of the Tank Car." 

We describe the rapid growth in US crude oil production that put pressure on pipeline logistics and made rail a viable alternative for moving crude to market. 

The second installment began our survey of rail loading terminals with a map and a complete list of facilities in North Dakota. The follow up episodes covered EOG, Hess and Inergy, Plains, Enbridge and Global, Bakken Oil Express, Dakota Plains, BakkenLink and Savage and Bakken terminals north of the Canadian border in A Plethora of Terminals in the Williston Basin. 

We discussed the development of rail terminals loading heavy oil sands bitumen crude in Western Canada in two episodes. 

The last episode on rail loading covered terminals built outside the Bakken and Canada in the Niobrara, Eagle Ford, Permian and Anadarko basins as well as Cushing, OK. 

The complete series can be found at the www.rbnenergy.com website under the Daily Energy Post tab. In this episode we begin our survey of destination terminals with a look at installations built to receive crude at or provide terminal distribution to refineries on the US East Coast.

This is an incredible series. Folks need to bookmark it for future reference.

WSJ Links

Section M (Mansion): I don't read.

Section D (Arena): if a tribute to Roger Ebert was there, I missed it. If not there, sad. Lowers my opinion of the Arena editor. Just a slight tad. My bad: it's in the front section. Sorry. My opinion of the WSJ just went up. A lot.

Section C ( Money & Investing):

Fears on teamsters pensions:  

Some companies are pushing to withdraw their workers from a giant Teamsters pension plan that faces a deep funding shortfall and questions about its long-term viability.

Investment losses during the financial crisis and hard times for trucking companies that pay into the Teamsters' Central States Funds have sapped the fund of money it uses to pay promised benefits.

With just 60 cents of assets for every $1 in obligations, the Teamsters pension fund is considered in "critical" status by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., the federal agency that backstops failed pensions.

Congress spends its time on the banks, and conveniently avoids looking into the Teamsters.

Section B (Marketplace):

• What is Facebook "Home"? So far, not impressed.

Section A:

Oil-boom byproduct: unaffordable housing. It is a a problem. Even folks with moderate oil royalty income from the Bakken are getting checks exceeding $30,000/month, and as we move to increased-density drilling these checks will get bigger. Oil patch workers are easily making $100,000/years.

In the 12-county Bakken region—which comprises nine counties in North Dakota and three in Montana—the working population has swollen to 85,000 as of December from 50,000 three years earlier. Most of them are oil-field workers chasing high-paying new jobs, according to the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank.

Along with them, listing prices for the few available homes in the region have gone up too, rising by nearly 27% in the past year to an average of $253,000, according to Realtor.com. Some rentals have gone up even more: A one-bedroom apartment in Williston, N.D., that rented for several hundred dollars a month before the boom now goes for $2,000.

That has left some residents—whose incomes only recently were adequate for their homes—feeling sidelined. Police dispatchers, teachers, municipal workers—and others in traditionally moderate-income jobs earn too little to keep up when it comes to paying for homes and apartments.

As a result, North Dakota towns such as Tioga and Watford City are grappling with challenges commonly faced by economically vibrant areas like San Francisco and New York in determining how to create affordable "workforce housing" for service-sector employees. The city of Williston paid $1.5 million in 2011 for a stake in an apartment complex in town, allowing it to control 77 units there and rent them cheaply to its employees. But it isn't enough. 

The timing of this article could not have been more ... well, timely. My current poll is on this exact issue.

By the way, a poll a couple years ago suggested that upwards of half the respondents felt the housing situation would be resolved within a year. Also, compare this story with The Atlantic Monthly's story that the Bakken boom is over. Folks looking for a home in the oil patch probably wish the boom was over.

• Roger Ebert: movie critic found fame on the small screen.

• North Korea: too dangerous to fail. Stories everywhere; no links provided. 

• Op-ed: Obama's gun-control misfire. The president figured Republicans who opposed his agenda would feel the heat. Instead it is Democrats, mostly in the Senate, who are sweating bullets. -- Strassel.

• Op-ed: call them tiger students. And get to work. One reason why Asians dominate New York's top public high schools: high parental expectations. -- Kozak.

• Bookshelf: a troubadour on the moors. A poet treks across northern Britain, giving nightly readings to skeptical villagers. Ben Downing reviews Simon Armitage's Walking Home.