Bakken Economy -- Western North Dakota Television Market Ranking One Of The Nation's Fastest Growing -- September 17, 2015

From a press release:

IRVING, Texas -- Nexstar Broadcasting Group, Inc.announced today that it entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the assets of four CBS-affiliated television stations serving the Minot-Bismarck-Dickinson-Williston, North Dakota market (DMA #139) for $44.0 million from Reiten Television, Inc.

In addition, under the terms of the agreement, Nexstar will provide sales and other services to the market’s two ABC-affiliated television stations owned by Forum Communications.

The Minot-Bismarck-Dickinson-Williston television DMA is benefitting from rapid economic expansion related to strong growth of the U.S. domestic energy production industry in the region. From 2006 to 2015 Nielsen’s market rank for Minot-Bismarck-Dickinson-Williston has ascended to DMA #139 from DMA #160, making it one of the fastest rising DMAs in the country.

According to the 2014 BIA Kelsey Television Yearbook the Reiten television stations are the leading revenue share cluster in the market.

		City of License		Market Rank		Station		Affiliation
1		Minot, ND		139		KXMC		CBS
2		Bismarck, ND		139		KXMB		CBS
3		Dickinson, ND		139		KXMA		CBS
4		Williston, ND		139		KXMD		CBS
5		Minot, ND		139		KMCY*		ABC
6		Bismarck, ND		139		KBMY*		ABC
* Forum-owned stations where Nexstar will provide sales and other services.

Rumor has it that Dan Rather and Brian Williams will co-host a late night show on the Bakken. Dan Rather will refer to the Bakken as "hotter than a pistol" and Brian Williams will tell us about his early experiences in Tioga as a roughneck. Details are still being worked out on the seating arrangement; apparently their "good side" is the same for both men.

New Post-Boom Low: 67 Active Rigs In North Dakota; Whiting With A Huge Well; 3/4 Wells To DUC Status -- September 17, 2015

Updates

Later, 9:37 p.m.: the richest man in North Dakota was behind the idea for a high-speed train between Lost Angeles and Las Vegas. This is absolutely incredible; I can't make this stuff up. A huge thanks to a reader for spotting this. 

Energy Media Group broke the story today about our long time friend, advocate and investor Gary Tharaldson securing a major deal with the Chinese today to build a high bullet train from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. This has been a vision that Gary has had for many years. We are so proud of his dedication to North Dakota and all the the amazing business seccess he has had over the years.

Tharaldson will be "putting up" the first $100 million.

Original Post 

Rail in California/Nevada: this is really, really cool. And unless someone's "blowing smoke" it sounds like it might be the "real deal." It certainly beats the "bullet train" from Los Angeles to the Bay Area. BloombergBusiness  is reporting:

A China Railway Group-led consortium and XpressWest Enterprises LLC will form a joint venture to build a high-speed railway linking Las Vegas and Los Angeles, the first Chinese-made bullet-train project in the U.S. 

Construction of the 370-kilometer (230-mile) Southwest Rail Network will begin as soon as next September, according to a statement from Shu Guozeng, an official with the Communist Party’s leading group on financial and economic affairs. The project comes after four years of negotiations and will be supported by $100 million in initial capital. The statement didn’t specify the project’s expected cost or completion date.

The agreement, signed days before President Xi Jinping’s state visit to the U.S., is a milestone in China’s efforts to market its high-speed rail technology in advanced economies. The country has been pushing the technology primarily in emerging markets -- often with a sales pitch from Premier Li Keqiang-- as a means to project political influence. A $567 million contract last October to supply trains for Boston’s subway system was China’s first rail-related deal in the U.S.

Such huge opportunities in this country for young people just starting out. I wonder what the energy source will be. I had forgotten or missed the Boston subway story. I suppose to some extent it's a sad commentary on our own US Railcar/GM/Ford/UAW industrial base that we can't "turn on a dime" and build subway cars. Can't be that difficult. Sounds like Washington or Boston or someone let the UAW workers down. My hunch is that if US Railcar/GM/Ford/UAW had bid on the project it would have come in two to three times higher than what China could do it for.

There seems to be a bit of irony that after the Chinese built the first transcontinental railway in the US back in the 1860's, some 150 years later, the Chinese are still building railways and rail rolling stock for the US.

I guess we've lost our technological edge in high-speed rail, but we sure can build damn-good wind turbines.

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

Active rigs:

	9/17/2015	09/17/2014	09/17/2013	09/17/2012	09/17/2011
Active Rigs	67	198	180	196	199

Six (6) new permits --

• Operators: Hess (3), HRC (2), Whiting
• Fields: Capa (Williams), Antelope (McKenzie), Sanish (Mountrail)
• Comments: I see HRC is back to drilling -- or at least getting permits to drill

American Eagle and Petro-Hunt each renewed one permit: J. Adeline in Divide County and Farstad in Burke County, respectively

Four (4) producing wells completed:

• 30642, 3,572, Whiting, Two Shields Butte 13-22-33-16H, Heart Butte, t9/15; cum --
• 29258, 693, Newfield, Rolla Federal 153-96-29-12H, Sand Creek, t5/15; cum 21K 7/15;
• 29850, 1,249, Newfield, Rolla Federal 153-96-29-13H, Sand Creek, t5/15; cum 34K 7/15;
• 29257, 1,418, Newfield, Rolla Federal 153-96-29-4H, Sand Creek, t51/5; cum 34K 7/15; 

Wells coming off confidential list Friday:

• 29780, SI/NC, Abraxas, Ravin 8H, North Fork, no production data,
• 29795, SI/NC, BR, Morgan 24-21TFH, Pershing, no production data,
• 30100, 1,507, Hess, BB-Ole Anderson-151-95-3130H-7, Blue Buttes, t8/15; cum -- 
• 30669, SI/NC, XTO, Odegaard State 21X-16E, Midway, no production data,

The Fed Left "The Rate" Unchanged -- September 17, 2015; Samson Resources Files For Bankruptcy But Will Keep Operating

The Fed did not raise rates. The poll? 67% of MDW readers that responded said the Fed would not raise rates -- a pretty smart group of readers.

What's the market doing? The market is up 51 points. What does David "trickle down economics" Stockman say about that? The "market" is in store for huge correction if Fed doesn't raise rates. The market (NYSE) closed down about 100 points for the day.

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

Old News?

Note: Samson Resources has filed for bankruptcy protection but will keep operating. It is one of the few operators still applying for permits in the Bakken. Most recently, it was issued permits #31951 and #31952 for wells in Ambrose oil field (September 11, 2015).  My data base shows Samson Resources has 10 permits in 2015 as of this date, all in Divide County.

I thought this already happened; must have been a story suggesting it likely to happen. Whatever. KKR's Samson Resources declares bankruptcy. [Yes, this was posted back in August, 2015.]

Oil and gas driller Samson Resources Corp. filed for bankruptcy in Delaware Wednesday night, undone by a collapse in energy prices and billions in debt that KKR & Co. and other investors piled on to fund a 2011 takeover.

Tulsa, Oklahoma-based Samson and its owners were stung by the price drop that put money into the pockets of consumers through lower gasoline and heating costs, while driving other producers, such as Sabine Oil & Gas Corp. and Quicksilver Resources Inc., into Chapter 11. Samson’s filing is among the biggest energy bankruptcies in the U.S. this year, but it probably won’t be the last.

Samson has said it will use the Chapter 11 process to try to shrink its $4.2 billion debt load. Second-lien lenders would own “substantially all of the equity” of the company if the plan goes through, according to a statement last month.

The plan has support from more than 68 percent of second-lien lenders, Samson said Wednesday. That backing could help speed the company through reorganization. Samson said it has as many as 10,000 creditors and that it will keep operating while in bankruptcy.

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

Target Pharmacy (Soon To Be CVS) Unionizes In Brooklyn, New York 

The vote was 7 - 2. We'll check back in a year. Each of the top four directors of Target earn about $1 million in annual salaries and live in a state sensitive to workers' needs so this should not be a big deal. Operating cash flow for Target is estimated at almost $6 billion, so even a $1 million annual salary per union member that voted (9), the $9 million annually would only be 0.15% -- fifteen-hundredths of a percent of operating cash flow. With profit estimated at over $20 billion, the $9 million would represent only 0.045% -- slightly less than 5-hundredths of a percent. Everyone agrees the income gap between owners and workers needs to be narrowed. This would be a good start, Brooklyn.

And not only that, soon this will be a CVS issue. Nothing to see here folks; time to move on.

Note: I often make simple arithmetic errors. If this information is important to you, go to the source. This is not an investment site. Do not make any investment or financial decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here.

Wind Turbine Syndrome -- September 17, 2015

MidwesternEnergyNews is reporting wind turbine syndrome (WTS):

A Wisconsin town of fewer than 1,200 stands on the verge of sending shock waves through the wind energy industry.

Late last year, Glenmore, a rural community just south of Green Bay, persuaded its county's board of health to declare that the sounds of an eight-turbine wind farm pose a "human health hazard."

It was the first time a health board has made such a determination. Wind energy opponents from across the country seized on the decision as proof of "wind turbine syndrome," a supposed illness caused by low-frequency noise and "infrasound" that is typically undetectable to the human ear.

Local activists have continued to press the issue in hopes of shutting down the turbines, pointing to families who complain of sleep deprivation, headaches, nausea and dizziness -- symptoms similar to sea sickness. Lawns display signs saying, "Turbines kill: Birds, Bats, Communities" and "Consider How Your Turbine May Harm Your Neighbor." More than one family has moved out of their home.

I've often wondered about that inaudible noise.

I'm waiting for all the lawsuits in which folks allege property values have plummeted because they live near an industrial park. It was incredible what they have done west of Hays, Kansas.

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

BloombergBusinessWeek

This past week while I was traveling another complimentary issue of BloombergBusinessWeek showed up at my door, usually delivered on Sunday.

It's almost tempting to subscribe. Whatever.

This issue has a three page (four pages if you count a full page given over for the headline -- huge waste of space) article on 3D Touch for new Apple iPhone. In addition, last night on Stephen Colbert, or was it the night before, Tim Cook spent most of the interview talking about 3D Touch.

There is also a long article on "The Big Dry Spell" -- the drought in Australia, California, and now Brazil. Of course, folks are blaming it on global warming, which in fact, predicted more rain, hurricanes, and floods (remember "extreme weather") and regardless, there has been no evidence of global warming in 18.5 years, going on 19 years which is very close to twenty years which is almost two decades, and 2.5 decades makes a quarter century of no evidence of global warming. So this drought has nothing to do with global warming.

However, what this does point out is that while we're all focused on a one degree rise in temperature a hundred years from now and flooding of some islands in the South Pacific, we've taken our collective eyes off things that are going to kill us right now -- like ISIS, the Iranian nuclear industry, and, of course, "the big dry spell."

One wonders where California, Australia, and Brazil might be right now had we not spent $1 trillion on intermittent (wind, solar) energy and instead used that money to figure out and get desalinization right. Californians cut back on as much as 31% in water by simply conserving.

And finally this headline: Solar Suffers From Gas Pains in Israel. The story:

With more than 300 days of sunshine per year and a world-class tech sector, Israel should be a hotbed of solar, but it has lagged behind places such as cloudy Germany and the rainy Netherlands.

That’s because in recent years, geologists have discovered huge gas fields just off Israel’s coast, making the country a potential energy exporter and allowing its power plants to burn cheaper and cleaner gas instead of coal -- and shifting the government’s focus away from renewables. 

I still think that whether it was Saudi's plan or not, forcing oil back down to $30/bbl (in some places) did exactly what Saudi was hoping: a) get people hooked on oil (and natural gas) again; and, b) destroying the intermittent (solar, wind) energy industry. 

And, of course, Germany and the Netherlands are now paying outrageous amounts for their intermittent energy.

Bakken Economy -- September 17, 2015 -- North Dakota Expands, US Stagnates -- Tea Leaves

The Dickinson Press is reporting:

Efforts to get a direct flight from Fargo to Seattle are getting a $500,000 boost from the federal government.

The U.S. Department of Transportation grant would guarantee any airline offering the service would not lose money in the first year, and provide marketing support.

Seattle is an important destination because there are strong business and family ties between the Pacific Northwest and the Fargo area, [a spokesman] said, citing Microsoft’s Fargo campus. 

Seattle is also a hub with connections to other West Coast cities, Alaska, Hawaii and the Asia Pacific.

The grant will be matched with $300,000 from the airport, the local Economic Development Corp. and the Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Rent seeking?

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

US Economy

Wal-Mart to hire 60,000, Macy's to hire 85,000 for holidays.

In line with one widely watched holiday hiring forecast, Wal-Mart said Thursday that it will hold its seasonal hiring to last year's levels.

Earlier this week, outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas said it expects retailers to add roughly 755,000 seasonal hires to their payrolls in the final three months of the year. That level would be flat with last year, when holiday hiring fell short of predictions.

Toys 'R Us, Kohl's, FedEx, and UPS expand hiring for the holidays.