Minnesota Companies Increasing Oil Specialty Services

The StarTribune.com is reporting:

In two years, Minnesota’s stake in the estimated $50 billion energy-equipment sector has grown from less than $1 billion to more than $6 billion in annual equipment sales.

Driving orders for this high-tech gear are a growing demand for oil worldwide, a shift toward cleaner, cheaper natural gas, and innovative new drilling methods that make exploration easier. Improved hydraulic fracturing techniques have emerged in North Dakota, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Canada and Europe.

Such processes demand billions of gallons of water, powerful pumps, filters and valves plus durable “frac sand,” which fractures shale rock to release gas and oil from the earth.

Manufacturers’ rapid growth in the oil market is much like their expansion into water 10 years ago. Companies such as 3M and Pentair snapped up water treatment firms and expanded their businesses tremendously. Now manufacturers are looking to oil equipment as the next frontier.

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A Note to the Granddaughters

It was meant to be.

I am still in my Manhattan Project - Los Alamos phase of reading. it is interesting how things have worked out. After reading a couple of books on the science of the nuclear weapon and then the history of the "city" of Los Alamos, I am now reading the memoirs of Freeman Dyson.

In the first chapter:

I am trying in this book to describe to people who are not scientists the way the human situation looks to somebody who is a scientist. Partly I shall be discussing the future of technology. Partly I shall be struggling with the ethical problems of war and peace, freedom and responsibility, hope and despair, as these are affected by science.

Wow, this is exactly the order in which the books should have been read: the science, the city, and, now, the meaning of the science and the city. It was not planned. It just happened. It was meant to be.

The book has a copyright of 1979. Near the end of the first chapter:

Recently a new magus has appeared upon the scene: a writer, Robert Pirsig, with a book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. His book explores the dual nature of science, on the one hand science as dedicated craftsmanship, on the other hand science as intellectual obsession. He dances with wonderful agility between these two levels of experience.

Who would have ever expected "a" Freeman Dyson to write about Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It remains one of my favorite books; I have read it three times, but not recently. I was quite surprised to learn the "rest of the story" after I read the book a second time. For those interested, the Robert Pirsig story does have an Easter egg.

The writing style of Freeman Dyson is very, very engaging. It has the feel of an author who wrote his memoirs on a yellow legal pad with a No. 2 pencil, and with/without many of his own changes/editing, it was not revised or edited in any way by his publisher or agent. It has the "feel" of Ulysses S Grant's personal memoirs which is said to be the best autobiography ever written. (Not the best military autobiography, but the best autobiography, period.) Whether it's the best or not, who knows; I would argue I have not read any that were better.

But I digress. It looks like this will be a great book, perhaps bringing my Manhattan Project - Los Alamos reading phase to an end. And he begins with a reference to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

It was meant to be. 

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From wiki: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values. ZAMM is a 1974 philosophical novel, the first of Robert M. Pirsig's texts in which he explores his Metaphysics of Quality. The book sold 5 million copies worldwide. It was originally rejected by 121 publishers, more than any other bestselling book, according to the Guinness Book of Records.