Cashwise In Dickinson, North Dakota Opens

The Dickinson Press is reporting:

The Dickinson location has been in the making since March, when Coborn’s, a family owned St. Cloud, Minn.-based grocery retailer, acquired the site of the former Kmart in the Prairie Hills Mall.

Sellers, who was brought on to the project in April, said he has directed eight stores in the past and has opened 12.

He said the Dickinson store will be one of the largest Cash Wise locations at 100,000 total square feet with a 70,000-square-foot sales floor.

Next time I'm in the Dickinson area I will stop by; compare this Cashwise with the one in Williston. 

It looks like Cashwise is along I-94 and I-98.

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EIA "Energy Cookie"

Today's "energy cookie":

Sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union (EU) at the end of 2011 and during the summer of 2012, respectively, led to the displacement of more than 1.0 million barrels per day (b/d) of Iranian crude oil on the global market.

Iran's main buyers in Asia, Europe, and elsewhere have replaced Iranian crude oil with barrels from other members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

If oil-related sanctions are lifted, Iran will look to regain export market share, competing with other OPEC members with similar crude oil grades…Iran's crude oil and condensate exports averaged 1.4 million b/d in 2014. In 2011, prior to sanctions, Iran exported 2.6 million b/d, most of which went to Asia, particularly China (550,000 b/d), India (320,000 b/d), Japan (315,000 b/d), and South Korea (250,000 b/d). --- EIA

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For Those Who Need More Proof That Minnesota Is Anti-Business

The Park Rapids Enterprise is reporting:

Offutt says the episode has changed his attitude about investing in any new farming projects in Minnesota.

"I would say that the least amount of expansion in the state of Minnesota is the best for our company," he says. "There are other areas in the United States that are a lot friendlier to agriculture and agriculture production than the state of Minnesota is under its present situation."

So, who is Offutt? Perhaps one of those most familiar with good water stewardship.

The patriarch of the biggest potato producer in the world says his company is not the poor environmental steward critics have accused it of being in a snafu over Minnesota water permits.

Ron Offutt, emeritus chairman of the board of R.D. Offutt Co. in Fargo, N.D., says his company got ahead of itself in applying for more preliminary water well permits than it needed or wanted. But that was, in part, a reaction to a changing permit application process and a rare offer to explore buying land from Potlatch Corp., which has sold thousands of acres it had used as timberlands.

In April, Offutt's company appealed a Minnesota Department of Natural Resources decision to require an Environmental Assessment Worksheet for its 56 water permit applications. A court recently agreed to drop the appeal, after Offutt withdrew all but 18 of those applications. The withdrawal prompted some to question why the company was against the environmental assessments.

See also:

• Tax climate for businesses: North Dakota, #2; Minnesota, #47.
• Business climate: North Dakota vs Minnesota.
• Marvin Windows experience.

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I Can't Make This Stuff Up

California's Governor Brown wants the EPA to "tighten US smog standards." His state would be exempt from the standards the governor wants to see imposed on the rest of the US. His rationale is that the state already has stricter goals in play. In addition, and I can't make this up, California, he says, is at the mercy of ozone from China:

Regulators say that ozone travelling from Asia makes it harder for the state to comply with the current standard. Indeed, the head of the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District warned that “it’s no longer an exaggeration that getting to even 75 ppb is total economic devastation in the timeline that’s proposed."

CO2, fortunately, stays within national borders. That's why no one here in the US is concerned about the 1,000's of new coal plants China is building.

I can't make this stuff up.