New Diesel Refinery For The Bakken? -- September 2, 2015

The Bismarck Tribune reports the following short stories:

A new refinery

• Burke County Planning and Zoning board supports
• Company: Ash, Inc
• will process 20,000 bopd --> naphtha, diesel, butane/propane in equal amounts
• where Truax Trayer coal mine once operated; south of Columbus, ND
• construction: 350 workers; up to 2 years
• annual operation: 80 people; annual payroll of slightly less than $5 million
• no mention of EPA, state, federal regulatory status

Tioga LNG plant back on track

• construction of Phase II continues
• last month, construction stopped when city noted that the developer had not paid the $39K bilding permit fee
• co-located with Hess gas plant
• first phase began operations in October, 2014, at 10,000 gallons of LNG per day; will grow to nearly 85,000 gallons when complete

Details, details

Alexander Public School

• $15 million project has started 

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Motels/Hotels In Williston

The Dickinson Press is reporting status of hotel/motel vacancy in Williston. At 55% is it now on par with Dickinson and Minot. Don sent me the link; I responded:

From the article: "The city's hotel demand, which reached an apex of 88.2 percent in June 2012, is on par with Minot and Dickinson, two other North Dakota oil communities.

Williston has added 1,500 hotel rooms since the state's latest oil boom began in earnest five years ago, a step that has helped push the average daily hotel room rate in the city down to about $122 per night.

Hotel prices still trend higher than that average. Williston's Hampton Inn, a division of Hilton Worldwide, charges $286 per night."

My comments: But it has to be concerning. It is very likely we could see some consolidation; two motels/hotels merging in some way; keeping one open, mothballing the other.

They might be able to close completely surrounding man-camps and move those folks to motels/hotels.

A long time I posted that "quality" of hotels/motels are not factored in to a story like this. There are many, many hotels/motels that should be condemned in Williston. I assume they will be the first to close. Such hotels/motels represent a small percentage, I assume, but it wouldn't take many to close to make a difference.

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Hope Springs Eternal

Breitbart suggests California is on the cusp of an oil fracking boom that will rival North Dakota, but it depends on Biblical proportions of heavenly water from El Niño. The story was published June 17, 2015, but either I did not see it or I forget reading it. The story is here.

California may be on the cusp of an oil fracking boom along its 1,750-square-mile Monterrey Shale Formation, which is potentially the richest shale oil reserve in the United States.

Earthquakes have disturbed the layers of shale rock that run under most of the western state, making fracking more challenging than in a region like North Dakota. But when the next cyclical El Niño brings the huge amounts of water necessary for fracking, California could experience an economic boom similar to North Dakota’s oil rush.
Breitbart News recently noted that “California Is Greece, but with Capital Gains.”

A state with terrific beauty and fabulous tech entrepreneurs, [California] mimics Greece as a failed experiment in liberalism that has the highest poverty rate in the U.S. at 23.4 percent. California is grossly insolvent over the long term with about $500 billion in debt, but remains alive – on life support – as long as the $12 billion of extra capital gains taxes hit each year.

In response to the state’s three-year drought, Gov. Jerry Brown signed an executive order implementing California’s first-ever mandatory water restrictions, which require cities and towns to cut their water usage by 25 percent. In doing so, he specifically exempted oil company water use for fracking. Brown hopes that California can be rescued by a fracking economic renaissance, just like the one that lifted North Dakota from the bottom fifth to the second-richest state by per-capita GDP in just one decade.

The article re-tells North Dakota's remarkable boom.

Much more at the link about Jerry Brown, a rock, and a hard place.