Halliburton Closing It's Minot Shop -- March 24, 2015

The Dickinson Press is reporting:

Halliburton will suspend operations in Minot starting April 1 and close the facility, a spokeswoman confirmed Tuesday.

The oilfield services company will transfer a majority of Minot employees to Halliburton locations in Williston and Dickinson.

Two data points (not mentioned in the story):

• BHI and Halliburton are merging 
• BHI built a huge new Minot facility about the same time they built the Williston facility (if I remember correctly) 

This from a 2013 post elsewhere:

I do work at the Minot [BHI] location. First thing I would like to comment on is the replies. We have not laid off 60 people due to any issues with zoning. In fact we are expanding to meet the demands. We have all ready out grown our facility in Minot.

The Minot facility is made up of several different product lines. We chose the location in Minot for several different reasons. One of those reasons is to try take advantage of retiring Air Force personal who wanted to remain in the Minot area. We also felt that Minot would be an appealing place to draw and retain skilled people that wanted an opportunity to expand their career locally.

One of our product lines does use SOS for hiring their employees and the other four product lines hire direct.

Please go to Bakerhughes.com and search careers in Minot. We are looking for talented hard working people who want to live in North Dakota. The main office # 1-(701)-420-8000.

Baker Hughes is proud to have nearly 250 employees in Minot and nearly 1050 employees that live in North Dakota. This is a great community to raise a family, and one of the best choices I have made in my career by moving here to Minot.

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Another Government Bureaucracy Out Of Control

Every veteran knew the intent of Congress when the 40-mile rule was adopted -- the folks at the VA found a way to circumvent that intent. Fortunately Congress caught the VA at their little game. Fox News is reporting:

Responding to pressure from Congress and veterans groups, the Department of Veterans Affairs is relaxing a rule that makes it hard for some veterans in rural areas to prove they live at least 40 miles from a VA health site. 

The change comes amid complaints from lawmakers and advocates who say the VA's current policy has prevented thousands of veterans from taking advantage of a new law intended to allow veterans in remote areas to gain access to federally paid medical care from local doctors. 

The VA said it will now measure the 40-mile trip by driving miles as calculated by Google maps or other sites, rather than as the crow flies, as currently interpreted. The rule change is expected to roughly double the number of eligible veterans. 

I hope it triples or quadruples the number of eligible veterans.