The North Dakota oil patch town of Watford City is the fastest growing city in the fastest growing county in the country.
Tuesday morning (October 28, 2014), thanks to Knife River, the city finally got some much-needed breathing room. With an assist from North Dakota’s governor and a pair of shiny scissors, Knife River officially opened the U.S. Highway 85 bypass.
The $55 million project — which routes traffic around Watford City to the west — was the largest in Knife River history. The nine-mile bypass takes 13,000 vehicles a day, including 5,000 trucks, out of downtown Watford City. It improves both safety and traffic flow in the busy Bakken oilfield.
“It’s a great feeling to complete a project of this size that will have such a positive impact for so many people,” said Brad Arntson, president of Knife River’s North Dakota Division. “We’re proud to be involved with this bypass. This was a huge job and took some good teamwork. In the end, we worked together to build a safe, high-quality road on time and within budget. This project is a big success.”
Knife River’s Andy Cramer and Stacey Ashinhurst managed the project out of the company’s Williston, North Dakota, office.
The North Dakota team worked closely with Dave Midtlyng, Zach Cooper and Knife River’s Idaho Division, which handled much of the civil construction.
In total, Knife River moved 2.1 million cubic yards of dirt and provided 520,000 tons of aggregates and 200,000 tons of asphalt. The project also included 30,000 cubic yards of concrete.
Knife River finished the project on budget and in less than 13 months, which was ahead of schedule.
“To have this happen in the speed that it did speaks to great cooperation,” Watford City Mayor Brent Sanford said at Tuesday’s ribbon cutting. “And to (Knife River), thank you. This has to be a record for finishing a project.”I was in the area two or three times when they were working on this project. A couple of things stuck out. It seemed they worked on this 24/7 and it seemed they kept the traffic moving throughout the process with a minimum of fuss.
| 10/30/2014 | 10/30/2013 | 10/30/2012 | 10/30/2011 | 10/30/2010 | |
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| Active Rigs | 190 | 182 | 185 | 200 | 152 |
ConocoPhillips became the first major oil company to announce plans to reduce spending due to falling crude prices as drilling in some emerging North American fields becomes less profitable.
The third-largest U.S. energy producer can meet its target to boost production by as much as 5 percent each year even as it reduces annual spending to below $16 billion, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Ryan Lance told investors today.
ConocoPhillips plans to scale back drilling in emerging oil regions such as West Texas and the Rocky Mountains. The company’s ability to produce oil at lower costs in more established areas that have fueled the U.S. shale boom make growth sustainable. ConocoPhillips could also reduce exploration spending, he said.The "Rocky Mountains" include the Bakken in this context. In the Bakken, BR is COP.
ConocoPhillips increased production 33 percent to the equivalent of 212,000 barrels of oil a day in North Dakota’s Bakken and Texas’ Eagle Ford formations, two of the fastest-growing U.S. oil fields. That follows a 41 percent output increase in the second quarter. The company also completed a sale of its interest in Nigeria for $1.4 billion.More:
The company has gone from a small player in fast-growing U.S. shale regions to a dominant force able to turn a profit at an oil price of $40 a barrel.
“They have plenty of places to put capital, and they can take the time to make sure that when they drill an unconventional well, they are successful and realize a high margin,” James Sullivan, a New York-based analyst at Alembic Global Advisors, said today in a telephone interview.
ConocoPhillips became the second major oil company today to report rising profits in the face of falling crude prices as an asset sale in Nigeria and higher output in Texas and North Dakota boosted returns.
The utilities say they can't accommodate the flood of newcomers to the green energy business, throwing in doubt the future of Japan's up-to-now aggressive strategy on renewable energy.
Another challenge is that supplies of power from sources such as solar are not reliable enough or easily stored.
"Kyushu electric shock is spreading in a domino effect," said Oba. "It's like fraud on the national level, with utility companies and the government in cahoots with each other."
Traumatized by the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl and encouraged by the highest rates for renewable energy in the world, Japan has been undergoing a green boom. It's now rapidly turning into a fiasco as the cost proves prohibitive and utilities anticipate putting some nuclear reactors, shuttered since the March 2011 Fukushima disaster, back online. The unfolding green glut in Japan echoes similar experiences in Germany and Spain.
Ebola is a lot easier to catch than health officials have admitted — and can be contracted by contact with a doorknob contaminated by a sneeze from an infected person an hour or more before.And there you have it.]
An easy way to catch most infectious diseases is by coming in contact with a person or animal who has the infection.I can't make this stuff up. Reason #2,387 why I love to blog. LOL. Mike Savage needs to move on.]
Nurse Kaci Hickox recently returned to the United States after treating Ebola patients in Sierra Leone. She's been in a tense standoff with state authorities, who want her to stay home for 21 days -- the incubation period for the deadly virus."Want her to stay .... "
It would probably be going too far to say that there is a war on between Maury Rubin's pretzel croissant and Dominique Ansel's Cronut -- going too far because the two things can and do coexist grudgingly, one at Rubin's City Bakery, off lower Fifth, and theother at Ansel's self-named bakery, in SoHo, and also because, truth be told, Rubin's combinaiton of croissant sweetness and pretzel salt is by now a familiar staple fo the lower-Manhattan breakfast, while the crowd for Ansel's deep-fried croissant-doughnut is still a phenomenon, creating lines that sometimes start crawling aroudn the block at Spring and Thompson Streets at five in the morning."....is still a phenomenon in New York"? Apparently we've had Cronuts in Grapevine, TX, for quite some time and they, too, are still a phenomenon.
American Smoke Wagon in Watford a City started out in a food trailer along Hwy 85 south of Watford. I heard their radio spot and had a sandwich a couple years ago. Today I am picking up sandwiches for the crew in a nice modern restaurant across from the new Cashwise in Watford. In 2011 when I came here this area was a big mudhole and now is nicely developed , and from all appearances is doing well.
American Smoke Wagon: Bill Nichols.
Food is superb.
Oil is selling for roughly $83 a barrel on the global market.
That's bad news for Iran, Nigeria, Venezuela, Russia, and Saudi Arabia, among others.
Iran's budget is built on oil at $135 dollars per barrel.
Russia has oil budgeted at $100, while Saudi Arabia will break even at $95 per barrel.
Forgot to mention that the Watford and Alexander bypasses are open and are just great. Makes an awesome drive now.[Memo to Google: update your satellite views of the Bakken.]
Watford City officials joined principals from Triton Real Estate Investments in a ground-breaking ceremony held Oct. 15 for a new 40,000- square-foot, four-story office and retail building located on Main Street in Watford City.
“We’re very excited about this,” said Jonathan Kalikow, one of the principals of Triton Real Estate Investments. “It’s our first office building in North Dakota. It’s our first, but definitely not our last.”
Estimated cost of the building is approximately $15.5 million. Triton currently has no tenants for the new building.The rumor is that all building material will be delivered by trucks using roads built by the government and/or trains using rail placed on ground given to tycoons in the 19th century.
Stocks were 294 Bcf less than last year at this time and 310 Bcf below the 5-year average of 3,790 Bcf. In the East Region, stocks were 130 Bcf below the 5-year average following net injections of 41 Bcf.
Stocks in the Producing Region were 146 Bcf below the 5-year average of 1,223 Bcf after a net injection of 38 Bcf.
Stocks in the West Region were 34 Bcf below the 5-year average after a net addition of 8 Bcf.
At 3,480 Bcf, total working gas is below the 5-year historical range.
| 10/30/2014 | 10/30/2013 | 10/30/2012 | 10/30/2011 | 10/30/2010 | |
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| Active Rigs | 190 | 182 | 185 | 200 | 152 |
Canadian production of diluent range light hydrocarbon materials such as natural gasoline and condensate are not currently meeting demand from the oil sands region. Diluent is used to reduce the viscosity of heavy Canadian crude so that it can flow to market in pipelines. Diluent supplies required to supplement Canada’s domestic output are nearly all imported from the U.S. via two pipelines that originate in the Midwest. Those pipelines are mostly supplied with diluent sourced from the Gulf Coast. Today we look at how imported diluent gets to Western Canada.
The first episode in this series provided an overview of current and expected demand for diluent range materials for use by oil producers in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin (WCSB). The diluent is blended with heavy bitumen and heavy conventional crude to reduce its viscosity enough to flow to market in pipelines. We covered the range of diluent materials used by WCSB producers including natural gasoline and synthetic crude oil. Total Canadian demand for diluent in 2014 is expected to average 380 Mb/d – meaning that with 160 Mb/d of local supply about 220 Mb/d will be imported – mostly from the U.S. By 2019 that import requirement number will more than double to 485 Mb/d (assuming that Canadian domestic production doesn’t increase dramatically – which it might.). This series details the distribution infrastructure being built out to deliver increasing quantities of diluent to production locations in the WCSB. In this episode we recap pipeline diluent routes from the U.S. to Western Canada.
An unsung byproduct of oil and natural-gas production is getting more attention from hedge funds and investors as they seek new ways to bet on the U.S. shale boom.
Natural-gas liquids, which include ethane, propane, butane, isobutane and natural gasoline, are separated out from crude oil and natural gas. They are known as the fuels in propane grills and butane lighters and as feedstocks to make plastics and chemicals. Until recently, they attracted little investor consideration.Feedstock.
“I don’t think the market really truly appreciates just what [NGLs] can do” for oil-and-gas producers, added Mr. MacDonald, who manages the $1.4 billion Invesco Energy Fund.
“I’m actually beginning to move some of my businesses more into the NGL side because of the demand,” said Steve Reese, chief executive of Reese Energy Consulting and Reese Energy Training in Edmond, Okla., who said he is planning to start a propane business. “The trading activity has definitely increased.”
It helps that unlike oil and natural gas, NGLs can easily be exported overseas, where prices are higher. Connections to the global market make it less likely NGLs will meet the same fate as natural gas, which saw prices crash when production swamped U.S. demand. NGLs fetch an average of $9.94 a million British thermal units, more than double the price of natural gas.Remember: this is not an investment site. Do not make any financial, investment, relationship decisions or change any travel plans based on anything you read at this site or anything you think you might have read at this site. Perhaps this is a red flag:
The lack of transparency in the market is keeping OppenheimerFunds Inc. from trading NGLs, said George Zivic, portfolio manager for the $420 million Oppenheimer Commodity Strategy Total Return Fund.
“Unless you’re privy to what [producers and manufacturers] are doing on a month-to-month basis, you can really get squeezed,” Mr. Zivic said.
Fewer Americans filed applications for unemployment benefits over the past month than at any time in more than 14 years, a sign the strengthening U.S. economy is buoying the labor market.
The four-week average of jobless claims, a less-volatile measure than the weekly figure, fell to 281,000 in the period ended Oct. 25, the lowest since May 2000, from 281,250 the week before, a Labor Department report showed today in Washington. Compared with the prior week, applications for benefits rose by 3,000 to 287,000.I had a devil of a time finding the number for this week because I was reading through this so fast. The number is there, but it's buried (usually it's the first line); and second, in the three years or so of posting jobs data, this is the first time, I recall, that Bloomberg put the four-week average first; that is never, never, ever done. I was wondering why the market was down on seemingly good news; now I know. The jobs picture is not getting better. It's mired in quicksand.
The Fed is so happy with low unemployment, it has ended quantitative easing. After $1.6 trillion.This is from the source that came up with the $16-trillion figure:
An effort to stimulate economic growth through easier lending and an increased money supply, the Fed’s current round of quantitative easing, as the program is called, has been in place since September 2012, when the jobless rate was 7.8 percent. Since then, the Fed has purchased $1.6 trillion in Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities.I thought the $1.6 trillion was low, but I don't have time to fact check, and in the big scheme of things, who cares? It turns out, at least one reader cares. It appears that mainstream media US News failed to account for everything.
On 18 September 2013, the Fed decided to hold off on scaling back its bond-buying protram. Purchases were halted on October 29, 2014, after accumulating $4.5 trillion in assets.
Small companies are starting to turn away from offering health plans as they seek to reduce costs and increasingly view the health law’s marketplaces as an inviting and affordable option for workers.
In the latest sign of a possible shift, WellPoint Inc. said Wednesday its small-business-plan membership is shrinking faster than expected and it has lost about 300,000 people since the start of the year, leaving a total of 1.56 million in small-group coverage.
Some other insurers have flagged a similar trend.
Aetna Inc. Chief Financial Officer Shawn M. Guertin said the company was seeing “some erosion at the bottom of the market” among employers with two to 10 workers.
Kaiser Permanente is seeing “some contraction” in the small-group market, particularly in places where insurers are offering cheap individual plans.
Laura Land, who co-owns cellphone-case-maker Empire Cell Phone Accessories in Riverside, CA, which has 38 full-time employees, said the company plans to discontinue its health plan next year and instead direct workers to the state’s health-insurance exchange.
“It’s getting to be too much paperwork for us to administer the plan, especially if workers are going to decline anyway and go to the exchange,” said Ms. Land, adding that several new hires recently turned down the plan in favor of cheaper exchange options.
It’s not yet clear how widespread the shift will ultimately be. An April survey by the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans found that 22.5% of employers with 50 or fewer employees said they “definitely will” still be offering health benefits in five years, while an additional 42% said they “very likely” would. Among large employers with 500 or more employees, about three-quarters fell into those two categories.
The health law doesn’t penalize companies with fewer than 50 workers that don’t offer coverage, and those with fewer than 100 employees won’t face fines until 2016.So, over time, all things being equal, the number of folks signing up for ObamaCare will start to increase, but not for the reasons the mainstream media will cite.
Islamic State militants in Syria killed at least 30 pro-government fighters in an assault on a gas field that has witnessed some of the bloodiest confrontations between the two sides.
Islamic State seized the Sha'ar gas field in July, killing some 350 government troops, allied militiamen, guards and staff.
Government forces recaptured the field, east of the central city of Homs, later that month. In a new round of fighting on Tuesday, Islamic State seized three wells and killed at least 30 government and pro-government fighters.
On 18 September 2013, the Fed decided to hold off on scaling back its bond-buying protram. Purchases were halted on October 29, 2014, after accumulating $4.5 trillion in assets.North American energy boom can withstand steeper oil-price drop. It sure seems like there is a lot of angst over the price of oil. One would think we should be celebrating cheap oil. And talk of "Peak Oil" is going the way of talk about "global warming." Or whatever Algore calls it now.
The opening up of the Arctic for commercial cargo offers a faster route for some shipments between Europe and Asia, and holds the promise of increased trade for once icebound ports in the High North of Arctic countries such as Russia, Norway and Canada.
However, much of the new traffic through the Northern Sea Route is one-way shipments of fossil fuels from Northern Europe to Asia or is between Russian ports, according to a report to be released Friday by the Arctic Institute, a Washington think tank.
The institute said 71 ships carried 1.35 million tons of goods through the route last year. That was up from 46 vessels with 1.26 million tons of cargo the previous year. The majority of ships originated in Russia and many were from one Russian port to another in the country. Only 41 vessels traveled the full length of the Arctic shipping lane, and of those, 30 ships carried cargo, the report said.[From elsewhere: video of the Arctic ice pack.]