Summary Of March Permits, North Dakota, USA; The Smithsonian Is Finally Getting It's Own T Rex -- From The Williston Basin

FOR THE MONTH OF MARCH, 2014 (ONE MONTH) 

Active rigs: Averaged about 196 active rigs, many of them drilling saltwater disposal wells.

Permits by operator (selected):

• American Eagle: 5 (0 last month)
• BR: 7 (14 last month)
• CLR: 52 (7 last month; 21 in January)
• Emerald Oil: 6 (1 last month)
• EOG: 11 (13 last month)
• ERF: 0
• Fidelity: 2 (1 last month)
• Hess: 20 (18 last month)
• HRC: 0 (1 last month)
• KOG: 19 (0 last month)
• MRO: 5 (1 last month)
• Murex: 0
• Newfield: 2
• Oasis: 18 (30 last month)
• OXY USA: 8 
• Petro-Hunt: 12
• QEP:  8
• Slawson:  9
• SM Energy:  8
• Statoil:  10
• Triangle:  3
• Whiting: 18
• WPX:  0
• XTO: 12

Permits by county (Williams was the big mover in February):

• Divide: 21
• Dunn: 24
• McKenzie: 74
• Mountrail: 58
• Williams: 44

Permits by field, selected:

• Alger: 0
• Alkali Creek: 33
• Banks: 7
• Bear Den: 0
• Big Bend: 3
• Blue Buttes: 0
• Chimney Butte:  1
• Corral Creek: 13 
• Cottonwood: 14 (after original post; see comments)
• Eagle Nest:  0
• Elidah:  2
• Grail:   8
• Little Knife: 3
• Parshall: 11
• Poe:  1
• Sanish:  8
• Siverston:  3

Permits for wildcat wells:   3

Permits for the year (end of March): 685 -- on track for 2,778 permits for calendar year, which would be a record, but down significantly from projection of 2,990 at end of January.

Disclaimer: summary totals from my personal database; not from NDIC (original source was the NDIC). There may be errors in the data and there may be typographical errors. 

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A Note to the Granddaughters

Wow, this is a huge story. The Smithsonian is finally getting its own T rex. The Billings Gazette is reporting:

Next week, the now nearly complete fossilized skeleton of the Tyrannosaurus rex dinosaur that Wankel discovered in 1988 in Eastern Montana will be shipped from the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman to the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.

There, the Wankel rex will be on loan for 50 years as the centerpiece of the museum’s new 31,000-square-foot national fossil hall, which will open in 2019.

“It’s about time the Smithsonian had their own T. rex,” said Mark Robinson, marketing director at the Museum of the Rockies. “Seven million people a year will be seeing it, and we’re OK with that. It will be good exposure for the Museum of the Rockies, Montana State University and the state.”