Van Lear Rose is an award winning album by Loretta Lynn, released in 2004 and produced by Jack White of the rock band The White Stripes. The album was initially intended as a musical experiment, blending the styles of country singer-songwriter Lynn and producer White, who wrote one track, sings a duet with Lynn, and performs on the whole album as a musician. At the time of the album's release, Lynn was 70 and White was 28.The album was critically acclaimed by Rolling Stone.
The title refers to Lynn's origins as the daughter of a miner working the Van Lear coal mines. The album peaked at number two on the Billboard Top Country Albums chart and at number 24 on the Billboard 200, the most successful crossover music album of Lynn's 45-year career.
Before the oil boom started in the Bakken region of western North Dakota, the Peace Garden State regularly ranked No. 38 for per capita income, placing it in the poorest one-third of America’s states. But then, as the Bakken oil boom energized the state’s economy with energy-related jobs, income, and prosperity starting in 2007, North Dakota has moved from No. 38 in 2006 for per-capita income to No. 6 last year according to data released today by the BEA.
Thanks to the shale revolution, North Dakota has gone from the bottom one-third of states for per-capita income to just one place shy of ranking in the top 10% of America’s highest income states last year.
And because the top five highest states for per-capita income (Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Maryland) are concentrated geographically in one part of the country, North Dakota now has the highest per capita personal income of any state in the country outside of the Northeast.That really is quite amazing: the top five -- Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Maryland (federal government) and then North Dakota.
It’s a different story, though, for the U.S. oil field services and engineering companies that have established dominant positions in Iraq. That includes Haliburton, the company that Iraq war booster Dick Cheney led before he became vice president.I don't think mainstream media can write about fracking without using the word "controversial" and I don't think mainstream media can write about HAL without mentioning Dick Cheney. For me, it's hard for me to write about HEL without mentioning Barack Obama. But I digress.
The "Freedom in the 50 States" study measured economic and personal freedom using a wide range of criteria, including tax rates, government spending and debt, regulatory burdens, and state laws covering land use, union organizing, gun control, education choice and more.
The freest state overall was North Dakota, followed by South Dakota, Tennessee, New Hampshire and Oklahoma. The least free state by far was New York, followed by California, New Jersey, Hawaii and Rhode Island.Best news: North Dakota beat out Montana, which didn't even get into the top five. I think it has to do with Montana's strict speed limit after dark. A freeway speed limit of 85 for Texas did not help push that state into the top five, however.
The data also show that blue states have generally become less free over the past decade, while red states have tended to gain additional levels of freedom.
The states with the biggest declines in freedom were Wyoming, Illinois, New Jersey, New York and Kansas.
Those with the biggest gains were Oklahoma, North Dakota, Idaho, Utah and New Mexico.
And contrary to conventional wisdom, the researchers found that conservative states are just as likely as liberal ones to score well on measures of personal freedom, which looked at laws covering marijuana use, gambling, marriage rights, alcohol and tobacco use, gun control, victimless crimes and the like.
"Personal freedom does not relate straightforwardly to the left-right spectrum at all," the study noted.Wyoming? Who wudda thought?
The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits rose more than expected last week, but probably not enough to suggest the labor market recovery was taking a step back.
Initial claims for state unemployment benefits increased 16,000 to a seasonally adjusted 357,000, the Labor Department said on Thursday. Still, they remained in the middle of their range for this year.
The prior week's claims figure was revised to show 5,000 more applications than previously reported. Economists polled by Reuters had expected first-time applications last week to rise to 340,000.Okay, the data points without the spin:
The alarming numbers proliferate the deeper you look: 40.7% of the people counted as unemployed have been out of work for 27 weeks or more—that's 5.2 million "long-term" unemployed. Fewer Americans are at work today than in April 2000, even though the population since then has grown by 31 million.
We are still almost five million payrolls shy of where we were at the end of 2007, when the recession began. Think about that when you hear the Obama administration's talk of an economic recovery.I think the Obama presidency will go down in history as the worse presidency since 1951 with regard to the economy. Not so much due to the fact how bad it's been, but due more to the fact that the president is unable to acknowledge it, and take steps to correct it.
The U.S. economy grew at a slightly faster but still anemic rate at the end of last year. However, there is hope that growth accelerated in early 2013 despite higher taxes and cuts in government spending.
The economy grew at an annual rate of 0.4 percent in the October-December quarter, the Commerce Department said Thursday. That was slightly better than the previous estimate of 0.1 percent growth. The revision reflected stronger business investment and export sales.
Analysts think the economy is growing at a rate of around 2.5 percent in the current January-March quarter, which ends this week.
Denbury Resources Inc. today announced the closing of its acquisition of producing property interests in the Cedar Creek Anticline of Montana and North Dakota from a wholly-owned subsidiary of ConocoPhillips (BR?) for cash consideration of $1.05 billion before purchase price adjustments.
The acquired assets include additional interests in certain of Denbury's existing operated fields in CCA along with operating interests in other CCA fields. The company estimates the final adjusted purchase price will be closer to $1.0 billion after adjustment for the net cash flows from the assets between the January 1, 2013 effective date and the closing date.
The purchase was part of a like-kind exchange transaction that was funded with a portion of the cash received from the Company's Bakken sale and asset exchange with ExxonMobil completed in December 2012.
As previously announced, Denbury estimates the acquired properties will contribute approximately 7,700 barrels of oil equivalent per day ("BOE/d") to its full-year 2013 average daily production, which reflects estimated average daily production of about 10,200 BOE/d for the remainder of the year.
Today we complete our survey of crude loading terminals.
The first episode in this series provides an introduction and overview of the “Year of the Tank Car” (see Crude Loves Rocking Rail). We describe the rapid growth in US crude oil production that put pressure on pipeline logistics and made rail a viable alternative for moving crude to market. The second installment (see Crude Loves Rocking Rail – The Bakken Terminals) began our survey of rail loading terminals with a map and a complete list of facilities in North Dakota. The follow up episodes covered EOG, Hess and Inergy, Plains, Enbridge and Global, Bakken Oil Express, Dakota Plains, BakkenLink and Savage and Bakken terminals north of the Canadian border in A Plethora of Terminals in the Williston Basin. Last but not least we discussed the development of rail terminals loading heavy oil sands bitumen crude in Western Canada in two episodes Heat It! (Bitumen Economics Part 1) and Part 2.
Thousands of Dutch residents have filed property-damage claims against the country’s largest natural-gas producer, after government studies linked a string of recent earthquakes to production.
It is important to note at this stage that – unlike a spate of tremors in England – these Dutch quakes aren’t being linked to fracking, the often-controversial method of extracting shale gas. Although fracking has its own problems, battling accusations of water pollution, the affected Dutch region is home to one of the world’s largest conventional gas fields, which has been pumping for nearly 50 years. Now the porous reservoir has begun to deflate, building tension along a fault zone.
The only way to stop the quakes would be to shut down production. Not a chance in an era of economic struggles, the government says.
Section B (Marketplace):A combination of better fuel efficiency and switching consumption from oil to natural gas is taking hold in the U.S. and globally, according to analysts at Citigroup. If they are right, the mainstream belief that oil demand will rise inexorably as emerging markets like China continue developing could be misplaced. In fact, oil-demand growth could plateau by the end of this decade under this scenario, potentially reducing oil prices and hitting major producing nations and companies.Mr. Bush is partly responsible. Legislation he signed in 2007 to reduce gasoline consumption in vehicles has taken effect, and the European Union, Japan and Canada all have similar measures in place. If oil demand grew at 1.2% a year to 2020—in line with its rate over the past decade—demand would reach 97.9 million barrels a day from 89 million in 2012. But that 2020 projection could instead be 94.8 million, thanks to such fuel-efficiency measures, Citi estimates.Meanwhile, the U.S. shale revolution is encouraging major oil-consuming industries, from trucking to shipping to petrochemicals, to switch to much-cheaper gas. Even in countries where the price gap between oil and gas isn't so wide, gas is being promoting to help cut carbon emissions. The net effect could reduce oil demand by another 3.6 million barrels a day, bringing Citi's 2020 estimate to 91.2 million barrels by 2020.
Suncor Energy Inc., Canada's largest oil-sands producer, said it and partner Total won't proceed with a plan to build a multibillion-dollar facility designed to refine heavy bitumen into a light, low-sulfur synthetic crude.
Suncor has warned for months that it was reviewing the project amid a glut of low-sulfur crude in the U.S. New drilling and extraction techniques there—in particular, in North Dakota—have enabled producers to extract large volumes of light crude across the U.S. That is competing with the synthetic crude that Suncor and other Canadian producers have been processing and selling to U.S. refineries.
Amid the U.S. oil boom, Suncor executives said it may not make sense to spend money on a new upgrading facility, which was to be located in Alberta. Instead, Suncor said it could be more economical to simply send unprocessed heavy bitumen to refiners equipped to handle it.
Mitsubishi Motors Corp. reported two accidents involving batteries manufactured by its venture with GS Yuasa Corp., the maker of lithium-ion batteries for use in Boeing Co.'s grounded 787 Dreamliner.The Japanese auto maker said Wednesday that a lithium-ion battery pack caught fire while charging during a test inspection at the company's plant in Okayama Prefecture in western Japan last week. The battery pack is used in Mitsubishi's i-MiEV model, the world's first mass-produced electric car.
Carla Hesseltine is considering buying a few tablet devices for her bakery so customers can place orders for her signature M&M cupcakes on their own, straight from the counter.
The reason: She fears the $7.25 an hour that she currently pays her 10 customer-service employees, mostly college students, could rise, perhaps to $9 an hour under a pledge by President Barack Obama earlier this month.
In order for her Just Cupcakes LLC to remain profitable in the face of higher expected labor costs, Ms. Hesseltine believes the customer-ordering process "would have to be more automated" at the Virginia Beach, Va., chain, which has two strip-mall locations as well as a food van. Thus, she could eliminate the 10 workers who currently ask customers what they would like to eat.
I'm waiting for McDonald's to do the same. I don't know if folks have ever looked at a McDonald's cash register, but if an 8th grade graduate from a foreign country who does not speak English can operate a cash register, I assume the average American can do the same, using an iPad.Section A (Front Section):
As energy companies have turned to trains to move crude from booming North American oil fields not adequately served by pipelines, such railroad-related incidents have risen sharply in the past few years, according to federal data analyzed by The Wall Street Journal.
From 2010 to 2012, 112 oil spills were reported from U.S. rail tanker cars, up from just 10 in the previous three years, according to the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, a part of the Department of Transportation that tracks most releases of hazardous materials. But the amount of crude leaked in spills has declined since 2008, when a big accident in Oklahoma released more than 1,900 barrels. On August 22, 2008, a BNSF Railway Co. train carrying crude derailed northeast of Oklahoma City; five tanker cars leaked oil that caught fire, leading to an evacuation of nearby residents.
Questions about the safest way to transport crude are bubbling up as President Barack Obama considers whether to approve an expansion of the Keystone pipeline, which would move crude from the oil sands of Alberta, Canada, to the U.S. Gulf Coast. Pipelines carry much more crude than trains and have fewer leaks per mile, though failures can be serious. In 2010, for example, an Exxon Mobil Corp. pipeline spilled 1,500 barrels of oil into Montana's Yellowstone River in an hour. The possibility of oil spills from derailments is only beginning to be on the public's radar.
Most of the recent rail spills occurred at refineries or other places where the oil is transferred to storage tanks or pipelines, and involved just fractions of barrels that were noticed by inspectors who look for leaks. But at almost 300 barrels, the 2010-2012 total of crude spilled is almost eight times higher than the amount that leaked in 2002-2007. Energy companies typically foot the cleanup bills.
The railroad industry says the amount of oil spilled is tiny compared to the volume of oil transported by the U.S. rail system, which has surged from 9,500 carloads in 2008, the year widely seen as the beginning of the current oil boom, to 233,811 carloads in 2012, according to the Association of American Railroads.
In the big scheme of things, I'm not worried about railroad mishaps. Nor am I worried about pipeline spills.
A policy change that expanded bison hunting in Montana has led to a surge in the number of animals killed, while fueling anger over how authorities are attempting to control the size of the country's largest bison herd.
Hunters—mainly American Indians—have killed some 250 bison since a group of federal and state agencies and tribal officials in October implemented a policy that enlarged the hunting and grazing area outside the animals' main habitat in Yellowstone National Park. That compares to 29 bison killed by hunters in the 2011 season, and a previous high in recent decades of 194 in 2010.
Some tribal hunting of the Yellowstone bison herd ends Sunday, while the state-sanctioned hunt ended in February.
Conservation efforts that began in 2005 had enabled the Yellowstone herd to grow to about 4,000 bison from roughly 2,600 two decades earlier.
The giant animals had increasingly eaten up vegetation in the park, occasionally feasting on the lawns of local residents and even the local football field in Gardiner, Mont., a town inside Yellowstone. Park officials had been trying to keep the size of the herd in check by occasionally culling diseased animals, but that had angered Indians, who wanted to hunt them.
Among the 10 fastest-growing metro areas last year were Raleigh, Austin, Las Vegas, Orlando, Charlotte, Phoenix, Houston, San Antonio and Dallas. All of these are in low-tax, business-friendly red states. Blue-state areas such as Cleveland, Detroit, Buffalo, Providence and Rochester were among the biggest population losers.
This migration isn't accidental. Workers and business owners are responding to clear economic incentives. Red states in the Southeast and Sunbelt are following the Reagan model by reducing tax rates and easing regulations.
They also offer right-to-work laws as an enticement for businesses to come and set up shop. Meanwhile, the blue states of the Northeast, joined by California, Minnesota and Illinois, are implementing the Obama model of raising taxes on businesses and the wealthy to fund government "investments" and union power.