Dakota Plains Holdings Frack Sand Transloading Facility, New Town, North Dakota, Begins Operations; A Train Wreck (ObamaCare)

Updates

December 12, 2014: Storage expansion construction underway and on schedule.  

Original Post

The press release:

Dakota Plains Holdings, Inc. is pleased to announce the commencement, on June 12, 2014, of its frac sand transloading operations at the Pioneer Terminal in New Town, North Dakota, through its new sand transloading joint venture.

As announced in August 2013, Dakota Plains and UNIMIN Corporation, the world's leading producer of quartz proppant, executed an agreement to construct a frac sand automated terminal with 8,000 tons of storage and a throughput capacity of 750,000 tons per year. The terminal is fully operational and will start-up this week.

Dakota Plains' sand joint venture has entered into an agreement with Rail Link, Inc. , a wholly owned subsidiary of Genesee & Wyoming Inc., under which Rail Link will operate and maintain the Company's frac sand transloading facility. 

A big thanks to a reader for spotting this.

For an earlier story on same subject, November 13, 2013.

List of CBR facilities in North Dakota, original post dated May 1, 2012.

Stand-alone post on Dakota Plains Holdings CBR terminal, May 1, 2012. 

Back-of-the-envelope:

• 4 million lbs/2,000 lbs = 2,000 tons per Bakken well
• 750,000 tons / 2,000 = 375 wells / year

It will be interesting to see if there is more to the story, for example, the source of the proppant that
UNIMIN will ship. Genesee & Wyoming, losing some coal business, gains some sand business.

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Emergency Room Visits Surging Under ObamaCare

A Train Wreck

Over at Carpe Diem:

Who-d a-Thunk It? More patients flocking to emergency rooms under Obamacare? Did anybody really think costs would go down, not up?

I assume this is a rhetorical question. In fact, the Million Dollar Way predicted this and discussed it in at least two earlier posts:

• First, in The Los Angeles Times, May 21, 2014
• Second, in The Wall Street Journal and personal experience, December 23, 2013