Monday, March 3, 2014: Blowing Snow In The Bakken; Washington, DC, Shut Down; Schools Closed In DFW (Texas) -- Global Warming

The folks in Minnesota are comparing the winter of 2013 - 2014 to the harsh winters of the 30's and the 70's.

My dad describes the hot summer of 1935 and the harsh winter of 1936:

"The winter of 1935 - 36 was one of the worst winters on record,” Carl remembered. “ I turned 14 on February 6, 1936. I was in the eighth grade attending Milberg School located in South Highland District.

“1935 was very dry and hot. Temperatures of 106 degrees were reported that summer. Not much green grew on the dry land except Russian thistle. I saw my dad cut the corn and grain and stack these cuttings along with the Russian thistle.

“We kept our cattle, usually about eight head, the five horses, and about 400 feeder lambs on the home place. My dad tried to keep about 400 head of ewes on the land he rented across the road about two miles distant (these were the ewes that had summer pasture on the old homestead).

“Then around the end of January the terrible winter struck. It was 40 degrees below zero for three weeks straight. We watered our cows and horses out of the ponds. It got so cold that the ponds froze solid to the bottom. It was then necessary to haul water from our neighbor’s well, about 2 miles from our place. We put chains on our 1928 Model “A” Ford. A 50-gallon barrel was placed on the front bumper and leaned against the hood. Two 5-gallon cream cans were hauled inside the car. We made many trips a day to water the cattle. The horses and sheep could get by on snow.

Active rigs:

	3/3/2014	03/03/2013	03/03/2012	03/03/2011	03/03/2010
Active Rigs	192	184	207	170	96

RBN Energy: Part 2 of "The night they drove old Dakota express down."

When it comes back up, it will be In the latter half of 2013 two very similar pipeline projects dueled it out with shippers in North Dakota to secure commitments to move crude out of the Bakken into the Midwest and points south. After addressing some concerns raised by federal regulators about tariff structure, the Enbridge and Marathon Petroleum Company Sandpiper proposal appears to be on track for approval. The rival Koch Dakota Express project was abruptly cancelled in January of this year. In pure capacity terms both these pipelines were "nice to have" not "need to have."

The Wall Street Journal

Lead story, of course: EU, US, threaten to punish Putin. Okay. I think Putin sailed an armada os ships through President Obama's red line in the Black Sea. President Obama and Chancellor Merkel could always boycott the "Paralympic Games" in Sochi this week.

Front page story: global warming winter storm "marches" eastward. Nice pun.

 Rising numbers of German companies are generating their own electricity in reaction to a policy shift toward more ecological (= expensive) energy sources, and the government plans to clamp down on such activity. The firms will respond by moving manufacturing to third world countries, like the US.

Shale-oil boom spurs refining binge.

American refiners are set to add at least 400,000 barrels of oil-refining capacity a day to existing plants between now and 2018, according to information compiled by The Wall Street Journal and the consulting firm IHS.

That is the fuel-making equivalent of constructing a new, large-scale refinery. 

On top of that, plans are in the works for several plants capable of processing the ultralight oil extracted from the Eagle Ford shale formation in South Texas. Those facilities, which are relatively inexpensive to build, aren't technically considered refineries because they can't handle a complex array of crude types or produce a wide mix of fuels.

Heard on the street. Biting back at natural-gas bears. 

Rising production curbs prices" is the energy market equivalent of "dog bites man."

But what if it doesn't? Investors have seen this paradox already in oil. Bakken shale barrels have suffered sometimes big discounts on their oil even as prices on output nearer the Gulf of Mexico coast have remained high. The reason: Logistical constraints make it harder to get those Bakken barrels to market.

Oil's Midwestern glut now has a parallel in Northeastern natural gas. Gas output from the Marcellus Shale has ballooned to about 13 billion cubic feet a day from less than two billion in 2010. That has overwhelmed minimal demand growth in the region.

Already, regional discounts have opened to benchmark Henry Hub prices. Excess Northeastern gas should flow west and south to meet demand.

Citigroup estimates that if all planned pipes materialize and run flat out, then they can handle regional supply growth of two billion cubic feet a day every year out to 2018. But growth last year was double that, and pipes rarely run 100% of the time.

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Record low temperature for Billings, Montana, set yesterday:

Sunday’s low in Billings of minus 21 degrees broke a record for the month of March ...
The previous coldest day for March was minus 19 degrees on March 6 and 7 in 1951, “so this cold snap we had with this snow was pretty unusual,” Tesar said. He got reports of overnight temperatures ranging from minus 21 in Billings down to minus 34 in Custer.