Three Big MDU Natural Gas Projects? I'm Starting To Lose Count -- June 29, 2017

Notes based on an MDU press release today:

• Gwinner natural gas project: $14 million.
• expansion of Line Section 27, northwestern North Dakota: $30 million project (press release)
• Valley Expansion project near Fargo, ND: $60 million project (press release)

Line Section 27, northwestern ND:

• $30 million
• 13 miles, 24-inch diameter pipeline; associated facilities
• capacity will jump to 600,000 dekatherms/day
• in-service date, 3Q18 -- late next year 
• note: I've always used $1 million / mile when estimating cost of a new pipeline -- looks like with the associated facilities, this is two to three times the usual $1 million / mile price tag

Valley Expansion, near Fargo, ND:

• in-service date also late next year

From Kyle's converter:

A dekatherm is equal to 10 therms or 1,000,000 British thermal units (MMBtu). It is also approximately equal to one thousand cubic feet (Mcf) of natural gas or exactly one Mcf of natural gas with a heating value of 1000 Btu/cf. It appears 600,000 dekatherms equates to 600 million cubic of natural gas.

See comment from reader below:

• awhile back, an analyst described natgas thusly ...
• when produced, it is in units of volume, e.g.., cubic feet.
• when sent by pipeline, units of heat content, e.g.., mmbtuw
• when shipped in liquid state, in volumes or weight such as cubic meters or metric tons
• the monetary value is always expressed in terms of heat content (mmbtu), which is almost identical to cubic feet for 100% methane (dry gas); and,
• there you have it ... in a nutshell....

Note: I don't know if I posted this, but sometime earlier this month the "stock picker of 2017," Chris Ellinghaus, was interviewed on CNBC. He provided two of his picks for 2017: one of his picks was MDU. From an e-mail I sent a reader on June 19, 2017: By the way, on CNBC today, the "2017 Stock Picker of the Year" was interviewed. He gave two picks: Allete and MDU. The URL is: http://www.cnbc.com/video/2017/06/19/what-2017s-top-stock-picker-is-buying.html but unfortunately it looks like the video doesn't always load; it took me several tries to get it to load.

Note: Bloomberg announced its own stock picker of the year for 2016 back in late December.