Officials have dedicated a new water treatment plant for the community of Parshall.
The $12 million facility on the east shore of Lake Sakakawea will serve the city of about 1,000 people and also rural residents in the northeast part of the Fort Berthold Reservation.
June 15, 2013: President O'Bama's African trip this month will cost $100 million. If they could cut $4 million from the African trip, they could fund one year of White House tours at $75,000/week.It turns out that $100 million figure was hugely under-estimated.
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| Date | Oil Runs | MCF Sold |
|---|---|---|
| 4-2013 | 3051 | 0 |
| 3-2013 | 3979 | 0 |
| 2-2013 | 3276 | 0 |
| Date | Oil Runs | MCF Sold |
|---|---|---|
| 5-2013 | 14032 | 0 |
| Date | Oil Runs | MCF Sold |
|---|---|---|
| 5-2013 | 20439 | 0 |
| 4-2013 | 1635 | 0 |
| Date | Oil Runs | MCF Sold |
|---|---|---|
| 5-2013 | 7007 | 0 |
| 4-2013 | 8493 | 0 |
| 3-2013 | 4545 | 0 |
| 2-2013 | 483 | 0 |
| Energy in the United Kingdom | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Capita | Prim. energy | Production | Import | Electricity | CO2-emission | ||||||||
| million | TWh | TWh | TWh | TWh | Mt | ||||||||
| 2004 | 59.8 | 2,718 | 2,619 | 135 | 371 | 537 | |||||||
| 2007 | 60.8 | 2,458 | 2,050 | 522 | 373 | 523 | |||||||
| 2008 | 61.4 | 2,424 | 1,939 | 672 | 372 | 511 | |||||||
| 2009 | 61.8 | 2,288 | 1,848 | 641 | 352 | 466 | |||||||
| 2010 | 62.2 | 2,355 | 1,730 | 705 | 357 | 484 | |||||||
| Change 2004-10 | 3.9% | -13.3 % | -33.9 % | 420% | -3.9 % | -10.0 % | |||||||
Many people have spoken at length of the Sally Lightfoots. In fact, everyone who has seen them has been delighted with them. The very name they are called by reflects the delight of the name. These little crabs, with brilliant cloisonné carapaces, walk on their tiptoes, They have remarkable eyes and an extremely fast reaction time. In spite of the fact that they swarm on the rocks at the Cape [San Lucas], and to a less degree inside the Gulf [of California], they are exceedingly hard to catch. They seem to be able to run in any of four directions; but more than this, perhaps because of their rapid reaction time, they appear to read the mind of their hunter. They escape the long-handled net, anticipating from what direction it is coming. If you walk slowly, they move slowly ahead of you in droves. If you hurry, they hurry. When you plunge at them, they seem to disappear in a puff of blue smoke—at any rate, they disappear. It is impossible to creep up on them. They are very beautiful, with clear brilliant colors, red and blues and warm browns.And much more.
What's interesting is that with the push-back from several West Coast locales to not allow coal export facilities to be built, it's really consolidating the coal market around a few select cities. In fact, five customs districts accounted for 90% of March U.S. coal exports (coal exports in tons/year):
The Norfolk area is home to coal-terminal operator Dominion Terminal Associates, among others. The facility is jointly owned by Peabody Energy, Arch Coal, and Alpha Natural Resources, which use it to ship coal around the world. It's a state-of-the-art facility that features many environmental safeguards to keep the 1.7 million net tons of coal storage capacity from causing any environmental damage.
Overall, coal exports provide significant economic benefits to Norfolk as well as the state of Virginia as a whole. It's estimated that coal exports contributed to more than 19,000 jobs to the state and added $2.5 billion in related economic value.Read about the rest at the link.
The Panama Canal expansion project (also called the Third Set of Locks Project) will double the capacity of the Panama Canal by 2015 by creating a new lane of traffic and allowing more and larger ships to transit.NPR also reports:
The project will:
When the project to widen the canal is completed in 2015, longer and wider ships will be able to pass through its locks, giving them access to ports on the Gulf of Mexico and the East Coast. But at the moment, the Port of Baltimore is one of only two on the East Coast (the other is the Port of Virginia in Norfolk) that can handle the large cargo ships, known as post-Panamax ships. It recently completed a major expansion, which included building a 50-foot berth and dredging the channel.
Mark Montgomery, the president of Ports America Chesapeake, says much rides on the canal's expansion.
"It will allow a ship that is three times as big to come through the canal once the widening project is finished," he says. "It's a significant change in maritime economics."
Bigger ships mean more cargo containers, which can translate into an economic windfall for a port, says Adie Tomer, a transportation and infrastructure specialist at the Brookings Institution.Even the NY Times seems to be excited to see all that American coal being shipped to countries where there will be less concern for all the "clean coal" technology:
The $5.25 billion project, scheduled for completion in 2014, is the first expansion in the history of the century-old shortcut between the Atlantic and Pacific. By allowing much bigger container ships and other cargo vessels to easily reach the Eastern United States, it will alter patterns of trade and put pressure on East and Gulf Coast ports like Savannah, Ga., and New Orleans to deepen harbors and expand cargo-handling facilities.
Right now, with its two lanes of locks that can handle ships up to 965 feet long and 106 feet wide — a size known as Panamax — the canal operates at or near its capacity of about 35 ships a day. During much of the year, that can mean dozens of ships are moored off each coast, waiting a day or longer to enter the canal.
The new third set of locks will help eliminate some of those backlogs, by adding perhaps 15 passages to the daily total. More important, the locks will be able to handle “New Panamax” ships — 25 percent longer, 50 percent wider and, with a deeper draft as well, able to carry two or three times the cargo.
No one can predict the full impact of the expansion. But for starters, it should mean faster and cheaper shipping of some goods between the United States and Asia.With the US declaring "war on coal" our trading partners will be able to snap up coal at fire-sale prices.
Google has a popular RSS reader, aptly known as Reader. But it's shutting down Monday. That's caused dozens of other readers to pop up or improve their services, making this a golden moment to try out a new way of browsing. Many of the readers are free and making money will be a challenge for their owners. So as with any start-up, be cautious.Options are listed at the linked article.
BNSF is spending $4.1 billion on capital improvements this year, many of them to serve the Bakken oilfield along the Montana border with North Dakota. Information about where those capital improvements will be made has been scarce. Stock reports for the railroad haven’t been available since 2009, when Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. paid $34 billion for all outstanding BNSF shares and took the nation’s largest railroad off the trading board.
But Edwards and others like what they’re seeing locally. Between Glasgow and Williston, BNSF is building several long track sidings this construction season. The sidings are desperately needed because they allow rail shuttles of 100-plus cars to pull over and let other loads by. The only thing better than sidings, Edwards said, would be two rail lines running side by side.See the linked article for more.
More Washington state oil refineries are preparing to accept crude oil shipments from North Dakota: BP's refinery at Cherry Point, and Phillips 66, in Ferndale. The Tesoro refinery is already taking Bakken crude, and the Shell refinery in Anacortes has announced plans to do so, also.Second story line, the why:
The refineries need to diversify their supply, with oil production in Alaska falling from historic levels. Alaskan oil has been a mainstay for Washington refineries, but that production is falling. At its peak, Alaska produced about 2 million barrels a day, but that has declined to about 500,000 barrels a day.Third story, the what, economic activity:
The BP refinery is building an almost 2-mile-long rail loop to handle the shipments, and Phillips 66 is planning its own rail terminal. Phillips reported to Whatcom County that it expects to handle one oil train every two days, on average, while BP expects one per day, at most.
The trains are made up of 100 or more tank cars, Phillips reports, with total train lengths of more than one mile. Those trains will travel to and from the refineries on the BNSF line.Fourth story line, the impact, displacing natural gas plans:
Fifth story line, rail:
BP once planned to build a large natural gas-fired generating plant on the same site, and obtained permits to build it. Corporate officials eventually decided not to proceed with that project, but some of the environmental groundwork done for the generating plant helped to clear the way for the rail loop.
Once the rail terminal is done, Phillips could meet as much as 30 percent of its 100,000-barrel per day demand with rail shipments.Sixth story line, the boom:
Seventh story line, lack of pipelines:
At the same time, the use of fracking technology has generated a boom in North Dakota's Bakken formation, with production there now estimated at 790,000 barrels a day.
There are no pipelines to move that oil west.And, of course, the environmental boiler plate story line:
While trainloads of crude oil pose some spill hazards, Holmes observed that every form of oil transport proposes risks.
Eric de Place, policy director at environment-oriented Sightline Institute in Seattle, said that is true.
"I don't want to be alarmist, because oil spills happen on vessels and they happen on pipelines also," de Place said.
But de Place said environmentalists and public officials should pay more attention to the sudden boom in crude oil shipments by rail.Okay. De Place could have summed it up by saying, "Sh*t happens." And life goes on.
Katie Ledecky broke one of the oldest national championship records Saturday night in Indianapolis, finishing the 1,500-meter freestyle in 15 minutes, 47.15 seconds. She beat 2012 Olympic teammate Chloe Sutton by 20.6 seconds and broke Janet Evans’ 25-year-old long-course championship record by nearly 5 seconds. It also was the fastest time in the world this year.
By winning the three longest events this week and finishing second in the 200 free, Ledecky has a chance to become the first American woman to compete in the 200, 400, 800 and 1,500 free at the world championships.
In June 1942 Dr. Hagan received his doctor of medicine degree at Rush Medical College, an adjunct of the University of Chicago. He interned at Ancker Hospital, St. Paul, Minn., and on Dec. 22, 1942, was commissioned as a lieutenant, junior grade, in the U.S. Navy Reserve Medical Corps.
Dr. Hagan entered active duty with the U.S. Navy in April 1943 attached to the 1st Marine Division as a combat surgeon.His time in service to his country included four contested landings with the Marines which earned him a Purple Heart, Silver Star, two Bronze Stars and two Presidential Unit Citations, along with many other decorations.
Fracking became a hot issue after the Democratic State Committee voted 118-81 for a statewide moratorium on fracking. Following the June 15 vote, former Democrat Governor Ed Rendell told the Patriot-News newspaper the resolution was “very ill-advised.”
Rendell asserted that John Hanger and Kathleen McGinty, both former secretaries of the state Department of Environmental Protection, are the state’s “biggest environmentalists” and noted “both approved of fracking, permitted it and moved to put in place changes that have dramatically reformed the fracking process.”
The bottom line is the race for the Democratic Party’s gubernatorial nomination will be anything but boring. Most state’s environmental groups passionately oppose fracking while many labor unions and business groups support it with enthusiasm. Urban area voters, many concerned about possibility of drilling in their backyard, are generally opposed, but many rural voters who profited from royalties and leases support it.My hunch: the mineral owners are in deep trouble. Class warfare. Demagoguery. The haves vs have-nots. Fear-mongering. Dimock.
... did most of his research and writing while on holiday, holed up in the public library at the Yorkshire seaside town of Whitby. The thin historical background to the character appears to have been stitched together from a handful of references. From an article on Transylvanian superstitions, Stoker took both his setting and various details of vampire lore, including the tradition that the creatures are best killed with a stake through the heart. He invented other tropes, not least the inability of a vampire to cause a reflection, cross water or endure sunlight.I had the wonderful fortune to actually spend a full day at Whitby, Yorkshire, some years ago.
Jet is a geological material and is considered to be a minor gemstone. Jet is not considered a true mineral, but rather a mineraloid as it has an organic origin, being derived from decaying wood under extreme pressure. The jet found at Whitby, England is of early Jurassic (Toarcian) age, approximately 182 million years old.I bought a small Whitby jet Christian cross for our younger daughter who, at the time, had spent several successive (and successful) summers as a missionary in Africa and Peru. I wish I had bought much more Whitby jet at the time as gifts or as artwork for our apartment walls, but I was already transitioning into my downsizing lifestyle.
Jet as a gemstone was fashionable during the reign of Queen Victoria, during which the Queen wore Whitby jet as part of her mourning dress. Jet was associated with mourning jewellery in the 19th century because of its sombre colour and modest appearance, and it has been traditionally fashioned into rosaries for monks.
Wildcats between Norma oil field and Smith oil field about 35 miles northwest of Minot:Today, of all things, Don sent me a Dickinson Press story on building activity in Carpio, just a few miles southeast of these wells.
These are vertical wells, probably targeting the Madison.
- 19474, conf, Fram Operating, Nailor Trust 1,
- 19781, conf, Fram Operating, Helmers 1,
- 19782, conf, Fram Operating, Schlak 1,
- 19783, conf, release 11/7/13, Fram Operating, Schlak 2,
- 21972, conf, Fram Operating, Goettle 1,
- 25472, ros, release 12/20/13, Fram Operating, Schlak 3,
- 25580, conf, Fram Operating, Murphy 2
Work will begin this summer on a housing development that could more than double the size of this small town on the outskirts of the Oil Patch.
Eagle Homes, a residential developer based in Illinois, is building 148 lots in Carpio, which had a population of 157 in 2010.
The project, which will get underway this July, is geared to provide affordable housing for families, said Ken Wisniewski, principal of Eagle Homes.
North Dakota’s oil boom is fueling a demand for workers, but a lack of affordable housing continues to be a challenge for workers and companies trying to fill jobs.
The musical influence of the Lone Star State, and the rebellious spirit of the 1960s counterculture, play lead roles in "Outlaw," a riveting look at how three Texans joined forces to liberate Nashville from its company-town ways in the 1970s. It is a small group portrait, tightly focused and well told by Michael Streissguth. The so-called Outlaw movement made Waylon and Willie into household names and put country music in the fast lane.
By the late 1960s, Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson, as well as Kris Kristofferson—the third member of Mr. Streissguth's trio—had reached middle age with only limited success in Music City, where rhinestone cowboys and hayseed crooners purveyed the slick Nashville Sound. Veterans on the RCA label, Waylon and Willie were stifled by the era's assembly-line methods. Producers chose the songs and arrangements for studio musicians, a far cry from the days when Hank Williams recorded his lovesick blues with the Drifting Cowboys, the same tightknit group that he toured with.And then another biography: this time of Count Dracula, Who Was Dracula, by Jim Steinmeyer, 319 pages. It would have been nice to see a snappier title to this book, perhaps the County of Whitby. An excerpt:
Speculation about possible sources for "Dracula" is equally inviting because there are relatively few on record. The Dublin-born Stoker wrote the novel—his fifth—while managing London's Lyceum Theatre, which was owned at the time by the fêted actor Henry Irving.
Fiction was strictly a sideline for Stoker, whose working days were dedicated to realizing Irving's flamboyant ideas for productions in which to showcase his talent. Irving could be demanding, as well as arch and imperious, and although Mr Steinmeyer does not quite say so, it's tempting to wonder if Stoker based Dracula's rather camp courtly mannerisms—not to mention his knack of draining his underlings of their vitality—on his employer.
Work on the novel, which began in 1890, was necessarily slow. Stoker did most of his research and writing while on holiday, holed up in the public library at the Yorkshire seaside town of Whitby. The thin historical background to the character appears to have been stitched together from a handful of references. From an article on Transylvanian superstitions, Stoker took both his setting and various details of vampire lore, including the tradition that the creatures are best killed with a stake through the heart. He invented other tropes, not least the inability of a vampire to cause a reflection, cross water or endure sunlight.Business & Finance leads off with this: investors dump RIM shares, and asks the question, "is this the end of the PlayBook Tablet?
Originally designed to be a low-cost plane costing about $40 million a copy, costs have grown to about $122 million each for the Air Force version. The Pentagon estimates that the unit cost eventually will decline to $92 million.
But some officials worry that any cuts to the size of the program, or too long a delay, will drive up those unit costs, putting the entire program in danger.
The plane has encountered cost overruns, developmental delays and questions about the reliability of its technology.There are a lot of great Opinion pieces today. I have time to link one: the climate speech Obama didn't give, Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.
On June 24, 2013, Samson Oil & Gas Limited entered into an Asset Purchase and Sale Agreement, dated as of June 21, 2013, to sell its interests in the Roosevelt Project in Montana for $13.533 million in cash, subject to the completion of specified due diligence by the buyer.Market action for SSN. It will be interesting to look at this company a year from now.
His proposal is so simple you could write it on the back of a napkin: raise margin requirements on any financial asset – stocks, real estate or whatever – as its price goes up beyond its mean-reverting (average historical) valuation. Reduce the amount of permissible leverage in proportion to the degree of deviation from the mean. "If housing prices go up, then you would have to keep putting more and more money down, which would kill the psychology of the bubble," Brock said.
The same requirement would, of course, prevent Wall Street from leveraging its collective balance sheets by a 50-1 margin leading into the next financial crisis. "On Wall Street, the objection you hear is: oh, we can't tell when we're in a bubble," Brock argued. "I say, who cares? What you do know is that theoretically and in the data, the average PE is 15 for the stock markets of the 10 largest countries for the past century. So if a PE of 15 is the norm," Brock continued, "and the market goes to 20, then you have to put more down if you want to buy stocks. When the PE goes up to 34, as it did in 2000, you bloody well better be putting 95% down, and in doing that, you deflate the tech bubble."
You might be surprised to learn that this proposal has historical precedent. A review of margin requirements shows that investors who could put virtually nothing down to buy shares of stocks before the 1929 crash were later required to limit their margin accounts as low as 0% and as high as 55%, with the figures moving around as the markets did. Brock pointed out that in January, 1958, when the Dow was at 440, a person could buy stock with 50% down. By August, when the Dow had breached 510, the investor had to put down 70%, and by December, when the Dow was trading around 580, the requirement had grown to 90%. "When everybody has to put 90% down," said Brock, "You no longer have a bubble."
He went on to give five points on why the song is good: marvellous verses, marvellous chorus, the music serves the song brilliantly, less shrill to the singing, and the vocoder breakdown. "Bulletproof" was listed at number twenty-five on Rolling Stone's list of The 25 Best Songs of 2009.I posted it at my music site on November 7, 2009. [Warning: do not click on that music site link unless you have a very fast internet connection. Otherwise, it will really mess up your browsing experience.]
North Dakota's capacity to export oil by rail has jumped more than 50 percent in June as shippers in the state increasingly turn to mile-long trains to move crude to markets not linked by pipelines.North Dakota now has the ability to ship at least 470,000 barrels of oil daily by rail, up from about 310,000 barrels. The capacity could increase to 710,000 barrels by year's end with the addition of two other planned crude-to-rail projects.
The increase comes with a pair of crude-to-rail facilities built by Texas companies to move oil from the rich Bakken and Three Forks formations in western North Dakota's oil patch.
Houston-based Musket Corp. increased capacity at its crude-to-rail facility at Dore from 10,000 barrels to 60,000 barrels per day, with the first full shipment leaving the terminal in early June.
Musket built the facility in 2008 and had been sending small so-called manifest shipments of North Dakota crude. The company now is loading full unit trains which typically consist of up to 104 railcars laden with 60,000 barrels of crude.And then this:
"We have successfully loaded and returned our initial unit trains to the Gulf Coast, East Coast and Canada from Dore with turn times of 10 to 17 days," Turner said.
Rangeland Energy LLC, which is based in Sugar Land, Texas, began shipping crude-laden trains from its facility near Epping earlier this month.And still more pipeline projects:
The facility, which includes five 120,000-barrel storage tanks and a sixth near Tioga, had been under construction for about a year, said Casey Nikoloric, a company spokeswoman.
The terminal has the capacity to ship in excess of 120,000 barrels daily by rail, Nikoloric said.
Kringstad said while six major pipeline projects are proposed to move North Dakota crude, railroads have taken a formidable foothold in the state.I still vividly recall the comment from a reader two years ago who opined that crude-by-rail would be a temporary phenomenon. Okay.
The first phase of the development will feature 288 units in five buildings. The luxury apartment complex will have a clubhouse with an indoor pool and spa.Holiday Stationstores, an industry leader in convenience stores, has signed a commitment to open a new location on the NEC of Hwy 2 and Chandler Blvd in Willstion.
Holiday Stationstores will develop a 6,000+ square foot convenience store with multiple fuel pumps and a car wash. The Holiday development is part of a larger 25 acre commercial development called Chandler Field.The fate of the 18th Street/West Dakota Parkway intersection took one giant leap forward when the Williston City Commission approved the latest recommendation for an underpass during a recent meeting.
The recommendation was made by Public Works Director Monte Meiers on behalf of a special committee established by the commission to identify an agreeable solution. The proposal would align 18th Street West to Bison Drive, which would convert 18th Street to the Bison Corridor on the west side.A public hearing will be held to discuss potential improvements and impacts associated with construction of the proposed bypass route connecting US Highway 85 and ND Highway 23 south of Watford City, ND.
"It's another living option for oil workers," Willard says. "But it's a subdivision instead of a man camp."Eleven (11) new refineries, port terminals in Pacific Northwest will receive Bakken crude by rail.
There hasn’t been a sighting of a White-throated Needletail in the United Kingdom for 22 years, so nearly 80 birdwatchers flocked to Scotland this week to get a look, the Telegraph reported. But instead of enjoying the world’s fastest flying bird soaring, they watched it fly into the small blade of a wind turbine and die.
"It was seen by birders fly straight into the turbine. It is ironic that after waiting so long for this bird to turn up in the UK, it was killed by a wind turbine and not a natural predator, “ Josh Jones of Bird Guides said.
The Needletail was apparently thousands of miles off course when two bird spotters identified it on the isle of Harris Monday. By Wednesday, scores of watchers had gathered in the Tarbet area of Harris, Outer Hebrides, Scotland to catch a glimpse of the rare bird.[A huge "thank you" to a reader for sending me this link. I would have missed it.]
BlackBerry delivered quarterly earnings and revenue that badly missed analysts' expectations on Friday, sending its shares sharply lower in pre-market trading.
After the earnings announcement, the company's shares tumbled 24 percent in trading prior to the opening bell.
BlackBerry posted a first-quarter loss, excluding items, of 13 cents per share, compared with a quarterly loss of 37 cents a share in the year-earlier period. The company cited Venezuela foreign currency fluctuations as hitting its results by 10 cents a share.
The GAAP loss from continuing operations was even steeper, at 16 cents a share, compared with GAAP loss from continuing operations of 97 cents a share in same quarter a year ago.These analysts need to get out a bit more, actually look around. Has anyone even seen a new Blackberry being used. By anyone?
