North Dakota Continues To Be In The News, Saturday's Notes Continued, Part II -- August 29, 2015

Update

September 2, 2015: we can close the poll in which we asked whether Ms Heitkamp will back Obama or back the Bakken. It is now moot. Her vote does not count. Obama has his 34th vote to block any attempt to scuttle his Iran plan.

Results of the poll:

• she will support Obama, as a loyal Democrat, that supersedes her NoDak roots: 55%
• she will support the Bakken: 23%
• she will vote "present": 19%
• won't vote: 3% 

Original Post

 

I'm paging through this weekend's edition of BloombergBusiness. I assume it's the last issue I will get for my introductory subscription, $10 for the year. BB has sent me several notices telling me my subscription ended some weeks ago, but someone keeps dropping off the current edition at my front door every Saturday morning. Almost tempted to renew at full subscription price. The key word is "almost."

As I was saying, I was paging through this weekend's issue of BB. There, on page 27, a full-page story (almost full page, about 5/6 of the page) is the story about the pressure on Heidi Heitkamp, the Democratic Senator from North Dakota to vote against the Iran nuclear plan. I always said it was a mistake for North Dakotans to vote a Democrat senator into office and now we will find out. It would be ironic if the Senate fails by one vote to override the Obama veto to save his Iran nuclear deal. When Iran dumps 1 - 3 million bopd on the global market, it's nothing but bad news for the Bakken.

I haven't done a poll in a long time. This is a great poll. Will Ms Heitkamp support Barack or will she support the Bakken? The poll is at the sidebar at the right; it's been such a long time, I almost forgot how to put up a poll. I'm betting she will not support the GOP on this one.

Speaking of North Dakota, the state is on a roll.

First, with the president's Clean Power initiative, North Dakota is going to have an entire new industry converting coal plants to natural gas plants. This will result in a gazillion investment dollars and a lot more jobs. And there will no longer be any worry about all that natural gas ONEOK is gathering, processing, and transporting.

Second, there is still some discussion on pros and cons regarding wind energy, but at the end of the day, there will be additional wind farms going up in North Dakota. As long as they put the farms up near Bismarck, Dickinson, and Fargo, it's fine with me, just NIMBY.

Third, I see Bobcats wherever I go when traveling cross-country. And now I read that Bobcat in North Dakota is expanding. Do you remember all those dire predictions and all that hand-wringing when a South Dakota Korean company bought the Bobcat company? Widely read Farm Equipment
is reporting the story:

Bobcat Co. and parent organization Doosan have broken ground on a $9.5 million company headquarters expansion in West Fargo, N.D.

The current headquarters — built in 2000 — houses individuals within several departments of business administration, as well as product development and marketing communications for Bobcat Co. and Doosan, a heavy equipment brand.

The expansion will double square footage and employee capacity, and Bobcat and Doosan will pursue LEED certification for the facility in both design and construction.

Last year, Bobcat and Doosan opened the exciting new Acceleration Center in Bismarck, N.D., a facility focused on engineering, R&D, training and product testing. Other North Dakota Bobcat and Doosan facilities have undergone renovations over the last two years.

That's in West Fargo. Fargo/West Fargo is one of the fastest growing smallish communities in the US. Despite the winters. By the way, my hunch is that a lot of that growth is coming from Minnesotans moving across the state line to escape taxes.

More news from North Dakota, previously reported: the FAA gave the state final approval to test drones at night. Of the six drone-testing sites in the US, only North Dakota got the nod. Some other dots to connect.

• Amazon uses drones
• Amazon has a customer-services center in Grand Forks, ND (one of the very few nationwide)
• Amazon now delivers alcohol and promises one-hour delivery
• North Dakota leads the nation in beer consumption on a per-capita basis
• most people drink beer at night
• folks in Fargo are upset about the "Fighting Sioux" thing and have a reason to drink
• winter is coming; it starts getting dark about 2:30 p.m. in West Fargo, about an hour earlier than in Fargo

I'm not sure about the complete accuracy of those four five six seven bullets, but I do believe they are "almost" correct. This is not a beer-drinking recommending site. Do not make any beer drinking decisions based on what you read here. If this information is important to you, have another beer, and look up the source next week on your company's computer.

Incidentally, rumors that Amazon will ship the first month's delivery free of charge, through a grant from the North Dakota Women's Temperance Society is just that, simply a rumor. 

For the moment that taps out (pun intended) the news from North Dakota.