Update On The Sandpiper -- Nothing New -- For The Archives -- March 28, 2015; North Dakota Loses First Place Status As State With Lowest Employment

This Dickinson Press article is simply for the archives.

Enbridge CEO Al Monaco made a half-hour long presentation at the Minneapolis Club for the Canada Minnesota Business Council. The transportation company is the parent company of the North Dakota Pipeline Company, which proposed the 616-mile pipeline that would stretch from near Tioga, ND, to Clearbrook, MN, and on to Superior, WI.

Same story, different spin. This time The StarTribune is reporting:

Even as the U.S. oil industry slashes investment, pipeline operator Enbridge Energy isn’t paring back its record five-year, $44 billion building program that includes major projects in Minnesota, the company’s CEO Al Monaco said Friday.

Monaco said in an interview that the 50 percent drop in crude oil prices since June “is very dire” for the industry, but hasn’t changed the economics of pipelines like Enbridge’s proposed Sandpiper project to deliver North Dakota oil across northern Minnesota to a terminal and other pipelines in Superior, WI.

“The amount of production that is coming on to our system and the amount of production we forecast from the oil sands or the Bakken is actually well in excess of the capacity we have on our system,” said Monaco, whose company operates the world’s longest crude oil pipeline system and has major operations in Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Monaco told the Star Tribune that he sees no significant change in the company’s investment plan, which is focused on liquid pipelines. Most projects, he said, are secured with contracts or are already underway. The share in Minnesota is $5 billion, he added.

I have no dog in the crude oil pipeline fights.

Meanwhile, the AP is reporting:

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Friday show North Dakota's jobless rate in February was 2.9 percent, up from 2.8 percent in January. Nebraska now has the lowest unemployment rate in the nation at 2.7 percent.

A nice graphic of unemployment in North Dakota, county by county.

*********************************

A Breath Of Fresh Air

The Guardian is reporting:

A 25-year-old British military healthcare worker who admitted she was too scared to tell her family that she had Ebola has been successfully treated for the disease.

Cpl Anna Cross was diagnosed while working in Sierra Leone this month. The 25-year-old from Cambridge was the first Ebola patient anywhere in the world to be given the experimental drug MIL 77, and has now been discharged from the Royal Free hospital in London.

Cross joined the army reserves in 2013 as a staff nurse and volunteered to travel to the country in February to help care for Ebola patients. She was flown back to the UK on an RAF plane on 12 March.

At a press conference at the Royal Free on Friday, she said she had been treated by an “absolutely incredible bunch of clinicians”.

“I’m a military health worker and in my civilian job I work for the NHS as an IT nurse,” she said. “If it wasn’t for both those institutions I wouldn’t be here today. I was diagnosed in the treatment facility I had worked in by the colleagues I worked with. That gave me confidence, because they were professionals. They put me on a flight less than 24 hours after I was diagnosed. Thanks to the team here, who I would say are the best in the world at treating this disease … I’m alive.”

 This might be the "original" story.

Weekly Ebola situation reports can be found here.