2015 Starts Off Where 2014 Ended -- More Money Being Spent Due To The Bakken -- January 2, 2014

The Dickinson Press:

Minnesota needs to spend $244 million to improve railroad crossing safety where oil trains cross the state, the Minnesota Department of Transportation reported on New Year’s Eve.

Transportation officials already are spending $2 million the 2014 Legislature appropriated to improve crossings at places where rails and roads are at the same level. But the new report recommends building overpasses or underpasses at 15 other locations, with costs that can top $40 million each.

The number of trains hauling Bakken crude oil through Minnesota, to the East and Gulf coasts, has increased as North Dakota has become the No. 2 oil producing state at more than 1 million barrels per day.

While no major oil train accidents have occurred in Minnesota, state officials have expressed concern that they could with more than 50 oil trains a week passing through the state, each usually with more than 100 cars. There have been explosive oil train accidents in other parts of the country, including one as close as eastern North Dakota.

The busiest Minnesota oil route runs near and north of Interstate 94. Up to 44 trains a week go along the BNSF Railway Co. line from Moorhead through the Twin Cities and south along the Mississippi River.

It should be noted that total rail traffic has been down the past few years due to a slow economy. If the Bakken slows down a bit this will give the Minnesota folks a chance to catch up on needed infrastructure. 

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment, financial, or relationship decisions based on what you read here. Just because this is what is needed, doesn't necessarily mean it will happen. I assume the state will figure out a way to shift these costs to WB, who in turn will shift the costs to Amtrak.

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Notes From All Over

The AP over at Yahoo!Finance is reporting:  

China's Three Gorges dam has broken the world record for annual hydroelectric power production, more than a decade after it became the world's largest power plant.

The Yangtze river power station generated 98.8 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2014, topping the 2013 production from the Brazilian-Paraguayan Itaipu dam.

Don noted two things: a) the size of this dam makes wind farms look trivial; and, b) the Chinese were able to compile this data and report it the first day of the year whereas our own DC folks would take six months to report it, seasonally adjust it, and revise it monthly until they got the numbers they wanted.

The Three Gorges dam is the world's largest power plant by installed capacity with 22,500 megawatts, a third more than Itaipu, on the Parana river.