Random Note: If One Needs A Nice Catch Phrase For A Bakken Blog ...

Frackin' and Trackin'

That about sums up crude-by-rail and the Bakken boom.

Don sent me this link from The Billings Gazette:

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.