Bakken Fracking Shows Signs Of Life -- The Bismarck Tribune -- June 26, 2016

Updates

July 2, 2016: Hess, EOG, Enerplus, and SM Energy are fracking. 
 

Original Post

 

From The Bismarck Tribune, Amy Dalrymple reports: fracking jobs show signs of life in the Bakken. The byline is Williston --

The Williston office of Job Service North Dakota is seeing job orders for fracking crews and other openings related to well completion, such as workover rigs and trucking, said manager Cindy Sanford.

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

Unreliable Energy: Lessons Learned From Sweden and Germany

I was looking for an update on Germany's unreliable energy program after a reader sent me an article suggesting "challenges" in Germany. It's hard to find "current" data regarding unreliable, non-dispatchable energy.

Something called the "Institute For Energy Research" appears to have "somewhat fair and balanced" reporting on solar and wind energy, but the institute is definitely not being financed by Algore. It's a new site for me. This is the background for this "institute."

The Institute for Energy Research (IER), is a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit organization that conducts research and analysis on the functions, operations, and government regulation of global energy markets.[1] IER maintains that the free-market provides the most inexpensive solutions to global energy and environmental challenges.

This looks helpful, dated May 16, 2016: "Lessons from Sweden and Germany."

Sweden:

After receiving wind subsidies for years, Swedes are dismantling wind turbines and selling them abroad. About 50 wind turbines have been dismantled so far in Sweden where wind accounts for 5 percent of the country’s electricity consumption.

Investment in Sweden’s wind industry was down by 40 percent last year compared to the year before, and Norway’s Energy Minister wants to end the joint Swedish-Norwegian wind subsidy program in five years.

Germany:

Germany paid wind farms $548 million last year to cut their power in order to prevent damage to its electric grid. Because of the damaging effects renewable energy has had on Germany’s grid, the government plans to cap the total amount of wind energy at 40 to 45 percent of national capacity, forcing the country to get rid of 6,000 megawatts of wind power capacity by 2019. The German government expects to spend more than $1.1 trillion on wind power, even though building wind turbines has not achieved the government’s goal of actually reducing carbon dioxide emissions. In fact, a greater percentage of Germany’s electricity is produced from coal than the United States.

That's another "first world problem": paying wind farms NOT to produce electricity. Wow, talk about a solution looking for a problem: wind farms.

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

Democrats Discriminate Against Muslims With "No Fly/No Buy" 

File under: I wish I had thought of that. LOL. Only in London newspapers. From an op-ed in The Guardian.

That using terrorist watchlists for gun bans is discriminatory to Muslims and Arabs was a prominent part of the national conversation during the congressional rush to “do something” after the San Bernardino shooting in December. But Democrats, who usually pride themselves on their pro-minority stance, made no mention of this grave concern during their supposedly heroic sit-in on the House floor this week, leaving a community already suffering from anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant sentiment wondering why.

The “No Fly/No Buy” bill members demanded to vote on is a problem in and of itself. It was introduced by none other than Representative Peter King, known for his controversial homegrown Islamic terrorism hearings, and would prevent anyone on government terrorist watchlists from purchasing a weapon.

But as of 2014, 40% of the 680,000 people on the master government watch list had no terrorist affiliation. Within that falls the notorious no-fly list, 64,000 people (including children) who are often Arab and/or Muslim. The reasons for their inclusion are largely unknown, and the process for getting off the list is extremely challenging – and, according to some civil rights groups, even unconstitutional. In April, the Michigan chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations filed a class action lawsuit in a federal court on behalf of thousands of Americans who have been placed on the terror watchlist.

No member of Congress at the sit-in appeared to acknowledge that not only are these lists ineffective in catching actual terrorists, they also will not likely stop mass shooters, either. The vast majority of mass shooters in America have not been Muslim or Arab, but rather white, male and not suspected terrorists. Neither of the San Bernardino shooters were reported to be on a list. “No Fly/No Buy” legislation essentially amounts to nothing more than embarrassing political theater for gun control with dangerous consequences for Arab and Muslim communities.

The current frenzy to blindly take action at the expense of civil rights brings to mind the post-9/11 legislation that many Arab and Muslim Americans are still reeling from including sweeping arrests and secret detentions of South Asian and Arab men, indefinite detentions of Americans through the National Defense Authorization Act and warrantless surveillance of Americans through the Patriot Act. In addition to being rights violations, these programs simply haven’t been successful in catching terrorists. We cannot allow history to repeat itself.