What's Up, Doc?

Rigzone is reporting:

Change is coming to downtown Midland in the form of a new high-rise office tower that was designed by international architect Michael Edmonds and will be built by Midland-based developer Energy Related Properties.

When it opens in 2015, Energy Tower at Midland’s City Center will reach 58 stories into the sky, making it the sixth-tallest building in Texas. Not only will the new tower dramatically transform downtown Midland, but it is also one of the most progressive building projects ever seen in Texas.

The mixed-use Energy Tower will – when completed in 2016 – have more than 990,000 square feet of Class A space. It will combine commercial office space with retail, shopping, dining facilities, as well as a hotel and residential condos. It is LEED-certified, meaning that it has been rated for environmental merits. The new skyscraper, which is being built on a two-block site at a cost of around $400 million, will help meet both Midland and Permian Basin-business needs.

The first commercial oil well in the Permian Basin was completed in 1921. Close to 100 years and going strong; getting its second (or third or fourth) wind. The Bakken is just an infant compared to the Permian.

For newbies: click here to see a graphic comparing the relative size of the Bakken with the Permian. You can't miss the Bakken; the Permian is the small green dot in west Texas.

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A Note To The Granddaughters

Thank goodness North Dakota schools do better than this. The Wall Street Journal is reporting:

When the Hempstead Union Free School District, Long Island, put together a summer reading list this year, students and parents were introduced to some unfamiliar new titles.
Among them: "The Canterbury Tale," by Geoffrey Chaucer; "The Lovely Bone," by Alice Sebold; and, most notably, F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gypsy."

School officials in the Long Island community said Thursday that they had disciplined an employee who made the dozens of spelling errors and typos in the 13-page list outlining recommended summer reading for students.

The list was riddled with embarrassing mistakes. It sheared an "s" off of Frederick Douglass's last name; called the author of "Jane Eyre" Charlotte Bonte instead of Charlotte Bronte; and identified the author of "Animal Farm" as George Ornell, not Orwell.

And, of course, it's not "Bronte," but rather Brontë -- but, ... whatever. That would really be a bridge too far for this school district, it appears.

This is the Hempstead UFSD's mission statement, from their website:

The mission of the Hempstead School District, a Long Island Model suburban-urban culturally diverse public school system is to ensure that students achieve personal growth and academic success and become productive citizens in a global society, by engaging students, staff, family and community in a comprehensive, challenging curriculum and effective instructional program which responds to each student's needs and aspirations in a safe and nurturing environment.

Okay.

Graduates of this school, no doubt, go on to become news readers:

Asiana Airlines Pilots, San Francisco Crash, 2013
Blame it on the intern. CNN is reporting:

Campbell's apology followed by one day an apology by the National Transportation Safety Board for the "inaccurate and offensive" names that were erroneously confirmed by a summer intern.

"Earlier today, in response to an inquiry from a media outlet, a summer intern acted outside the scope of his authority when he erroneously confirmed the names of the flight crew on the aircraft," the NTSB said Friday in a statement.

Wow, these interns are everywhere. 

So many story lines, but not worth the time or effort. 

The NTSB blaming this on a summer intern. Perhaps KTVU should have gotten a second confirmation ... the "names" were just too obviously made up.