Active Rigs Steady At 49; Domestic Terrorism Along The DAPL -- March 23, 2017

Active rigs:

	3/23/2017	03/23/2016	03/23/2015	03/23/2014	03/23/2013
Active Rigs	49	32	104	198	187

No wells coming off confidential list Friday. Second consecutive day of now wells scheduled to come off confidential list.

Five (5) new permits:

• Operator: Oasis
• Field: Alkali Creek (Mountrail)
• Comments: five Spratley 5494 permits, all in NENE 13-154-94 

One permit renewed:

• Petro-Hunt: an M Thorson permit in Burke County

DAPL: twice a day I check for update on DAPL. Earlier today, sent to me by a reader (thank you): no oil flow yet in DAPL, from The Bismarck Tribune. This is like putting water on the stove and then watching / waiting for it to boil. Takes forever. What's the reason now?

According to the Associated Press, authorities in Iowa and South Dakota are investigating damage to above-ground valve equipment, apparently caused by someone blowtorching holes through the metal works. No such incidents have been reported in North Dakota.

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The Hollywood Sign

A few years ago I actually hiked up to the "Hollywood sign" -- or as close as one is allowed to get.

The [London] Guardian has a very, very good human interest regarding "current events."

In 1923, the miles of hiking and bridle trails around the sign were described in a promotional document as “beyond comparison”, and the thousands of Angelenos and out-of-town visitors who descend on the area every weekend think that’s still true.

Now, though, the gate that Sheffner and many of his fellow residents have been using to access those trails is about to shut for good, after a long-running fight between those who think that living in the shadow of a major tourist attraction is a blessing, and a noisy minority who not only see it as a curse but have filed a pair of lawsuits.

Hikers and tourists will now be redirected to the next canyon over, where there are only intermittent partial views of the sign. Not only is the Bronson Canyon trail more arduous and more than a mile longer than the Beachwood access trail, but the gate closing risks shifting all the nuisance problems into someone else’s backyard.

That failure was triggered by a court ruling in February aimed at settling a suit brought by a privately owned horse ranch near the Beachwood Canyon gate. The ranch said that thousands of pedestrians coming on to its access road were interfering with its business, and the judge in the case sympathized.

I know exactly what horse ranch they are talking about.

I would hate to be the judge on this case.