Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Active rigs:

	3/11/2014	03/11/2013	03/11/2012	03/11/2011	03/11/2010
Active Rigs	191	187	206	173	103

Bakken watch: another day without a CLR report on the 14-well pad southwest of Williston portends bad news.

Bakken watch: seasonal load restrictions go into effect in southwest North Dakota starting tomorrow, March 12, 2014.

RBN Energy: inland crude tank barge fleet.

There are approximately 3,350 inland tank barges in the US that are all part of the Jones Act fleet. These barges move crude oil, refined products and petrochemicals along 12,000 miles of navigable inland waters – most along the Mississippi River system. Crude by barge traffic has grown 8 fold in the past three years and barges are over 90 percent utilized. Most of the increasing volume of crude moving from the Midwest to the Gulf Coast by barge is coming from Canada by pipeline and loading onto barges in Illinois. Today we review barge movements along the Mississippi River.
This blog is Episode Six in our series detailing the US Jones Act Fleet.

The Wall Street Journal

Government will investigate Government Motors over 10-year-delay in recall.

Article shows how out-of-touch the Obama-appointed Sotomayor is. In 8-1 vote she sides with government. Supreme Court rules in favor of landowner in rails-to-trails case.

The diplomatic "crisis": Putin rejects US proposal on Ukraine.

An interesting cultural phenomenon: US companies cling to writing paper checks.

U.S. companies lag far behind their counterparts in Europe, Japan and even Brazil in the world of e-payments. American businesses and consumers wrote 21 billion checks in 2012, according to the Federal Reserve. That's more than four times as many checks as were written that year in the European Union's 28 member countries, according to the European Central Bank.

A slippery slope: in fracking, more neighborliness. The story mostly has to do with overseas fracking.

McDonald's US sales slow down for fourth month. I think this has less to do with the economy but more to do with the franchise.