Monday Morning Links, News, And Views -- Part II

Awesome! Front page story, top of the fold, headline story photograph taken outside of Williston, North Dakota.  The Wall Street Journal is reporting:

More crude oil is moving around the U.S. on trucks, barges and trains than at any point since the government began keeping records in 1981, as the energy industry devises ways to get around a pipeline-capacity shortage to take petroleum from new wells to refineries.

The improvised approach is creating opportunities for transportation companies even as it strains roads and regulators. And it is a precursor to what may be a larger change: the construction of more than $40 billion in oil pipelines now under way or planned for the next few years, according to energy adviser Wood Mackenzie.

"We are in effect re-plumbing the country," says Curt Anastasio, chief executive of NuStar Energy LP, a pipeline company in San Antonio. Oil is "flowing in different directions and from new places."

U.S. oil production has reached its highest level in two decades, while imports have fallen dramatically. A system built to import oil and deliver it to coastal refineries has become ill-equipped to handle rising production in Texas, North Dakota and Canada's Alberta province.

"All of the pipes are pointed in the wrong direction," says Harold York, an oil researcher at Wood Mackenzie. "We are turning the last 70 years of oil-industry history in North America on its head, and we are turning it on its head in the next 10 to 15 years."

And the naysayers commenting over at CarpeDiem will continue to say that the Bakken is not profitable. Apparently the independent oil companies enjoy transferring money from the wealthy to the railroads. 

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The Yahoo! Finance link to oil price is still broken. Oil futures are down 11 cents to $106.31.

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Nissan Motor provides update on YTD sales; having its best year on record in the United States: Co announces that with sales of more than 733,000 units through July, Nissan is having its best year on record in the United States, led by strong growth of core models like Altima, Sentra, Pathfinder, Versa and Rogue.

• Nissan has set monthly records for overall U.S. sales in four of seven months in 2013, with sales up more than 8.5 percent over 2012's record performance.
• Nissan Division has set monthly records in six of the seven months this year, driving sales higher by more than 10 percent over a record 2012.

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So much for all that bad weather predicted by global warming. It is being widely reported that this is the slowest start to a hurricane season on record. Again, not just for the past year or so, or the past decade or so, but for a couple of centuries. The slowest start. But that would be expected. We are in our 17th year of a "pause" in global warming. Meanwhile, Algore  is in his 17th year of magnificent financial splendor living on this scam.

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Update to story below regarding tortoises. It turns out the whole story is wrong. Only six (6) tortoises will be euthanized. They have a disease and are failing to thrive. They are the only ones to be euthanized. The writer of the original story must have been incredibly .... whatever. It turns out the six tortoises are suffering from TURDS. I can't make this stuff up.

The following was posted at the time of the original post but is completely wrong. See aforementioned link (TURDS).

Unfortunately the global warming scam -- not global warming -- will probably wipe out the desert tortoises -- another species wiped out by man. I can't make this stuff up. The good news, we can see them in zoos.

For decades, the vulnerable desert tortoise has led a sheltered existence.

Developers have taken pains to keep the animal safe. It's been protected from meddlesome hikers by the threat of prison time. And wildlife officials have set the species up on a sprawling conservation reserve outside Las Vegas.

But the pampered desert dweller now faces a threat from the very people who have nurtured it.

Federal funds are running out at the Desert Tortoise Conservation Center and officials plan to close the site and euthanize hundreds of the tortoises they've been caring for since the animals were added to the endangered species list in 1990.

"It's the lesser of two evils, but it's still evil," said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service desert tortoise recovery coordinator Roy Averill-Murray during a visit to the soon-to-be-shuttered reserve at the southern edge of the Las Vegas Valley last week.

So, "we" euthanize hundreds of desert tortoises (on the endangered species list since 1990) and oil companies are charged with a felony for six migratory ducks allegedly dying in a waste pond during an unprecedented flood in northwest North Dakota. Don't even get me started.