A reader, thank you, alerted me to
this long essay on the future of fossil fuel energy in North Dakota. It's too long to dissect now, but you may want to bookmark it, save it somehow. It will probably be archived in the near future.
Currently North Dakota is experiencing major investment into
facilities from MDU Resources, Hess and ONEOK. These are a few prime
examples of that industry wide investment in North Dakota. John Gibson,
CEO of ONEOK and Chairman of ONEOK Partners, said the investment from
the petrochemical industry and the special attributes of the Bakken’s
wet gas are the reasons for their $3.5 billion investment in North
Dakota.
"First off the investment into the natural gas industry is
what is driving our interest into the natural gas liquids business. Our
natural gas business allows us to gather these raw NGL’s all the way up
into the Williston Basin and deliver them to the petchems," Gibson
said. "In a cubic-foot of natural gas produced in the Williston (Basin)
you will find somewhere around 8-12 gallons of raw natural gas liquids.
That’s ethane, propane, butanes all mixed up. If you go down into
Oklahoma or the Texas in the pan handle, that same cubic foot will have
say, three gallons per MCF."
And, again, from what I can tell, we are talking about a very small footprint in the state of North Dakota. Most of this activity will take place in four or five counties in western North Dakota: two or three counties in northwestern North Dakota and one or two counties in southwestern North Dakota. Almost no primary oil and gas activity east of the Missouri River.
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