Can Hess, ONEOK Get North Dakota Flaring Down To 10 Percent? Active Rigs Drop To Temporary Low; Global Warming Has Been Very, Very Good For Investors

Tioga / Hess natural gas processing plant, expanded, back on-line. The Bismarck Tribune is reporting:

Hill said that since the upgrades, Hess has reduced natural gas flaring from between 25 and 30 percent to between 15 and 20 percent. The company expects to reduce its flaring in North Dakota to below 10 percent in coming years.

Also, from The Dickinson Press:

The expanded gas plant now produces ethane, a new product for North Dakota. The ethane is transported by pipeline to a plastics plant in Alberta, Canada.

The production of ethane is significant for North Dakota, with several companies looking at petrochemical manufacturing opportunities in the state, said Director of Mineral Resources Lynn Helms.

Active rigs:

	5/20/2014	05/20/2013	05/20/2012	05/20/2011	05/20/2010
Active Rigs	187	189	209	178	112

 
RBN Energy: one in a series of installments on all the pipeline required to carry natural gas from the Marcellus/Utica. I don't think the average American (including me) realizes how big this story is. Look at the opening paragraph:

Surging natural gas production volumes in the Marcellus/Utica will need to move in just about every direction. No single market—not the Northeast, the Midwest, the Southeast, or even the Gulf Coast—is big enough to absorb it all. Midstream companies are considering every cost-effective way to replumb and expand their existing pipelines to add takeaway capacity, and when still more is needed, are turning to greenfield projects. In this, the first of several company-by-company episodes on who is planning what, we examine Spectra Energy’s plans to add at least 2 Bcf/d of new Marcellus/Utica takeaway capacity by 2017, and maybe another 2 or 3 Bcf/d by the end of the decade.

Along this very same line, PowerSource is reporting:

“The Marcellus is at the epicenter of the change in gas flows across North America,” stated Moody’s in a report released last week. The firm’s data shows that, of the advanced projects nationally meant to increase pipeline capacity by 20 percent by 2017–2018, 88 percent are in the East.

Mihoko Manabe, senior vice president at Moody’s and the report’s author, said those pipelines are transporting Marcellus and Utica gas to a variety of regions.

“The industry wants options,” Ms. Manabe said. “They want to be able to send it to Canada and the Northeast — we all saw the impact of the polar vortex — as well as to the Southeast’s growing power generation market, to hubs around Chicago and to LNG export terminals on the Gulf Coast.” LNG refers to liquefied natural gas.

The Wall Street Journal

Global warming has been very, very good for investors. Good for 22.2%, to be exact.

Growth in utility-company earnings in the first quarter This year's harsh winter weather hobbled the retailing, shipping and construction industries, but the polar vortex powered utilities to higher profits. First-quarter earnings at utilities, which generate electricity and, in many cases, also sell natural gas, were up 22.2% from a year earlier, according to FactSet. That's their largest jump since at least the third quarter of 2008, which is as far back as FactSet's records go. 

The Los Angeles Times

I always wondered when we would get down to these brass tacks? "Mark Twain: Inexcusable racist or man of his time?"

A decision by a Nevada state panel sheds light on another descriptor for the American man of letters held by many, even today: racist.

The Nevada State Board on Geographic Names has voted to delay a decision on whether to name a cove on Lake Tahoe for Samuel Clemens, Twain's real name, after a local tribe complained that the author held demeaning views of Native Americans.

It looks like everyone has WAY too much time on their hands.