Natural Gas in Water Wells -- Bakken, North Dakota, USA

Link here (regional links break early).

In the early 1900s, settlers in North Dakota tapped into shallow gases to light and heat their homes. Now geologists are conducting studies to see if these gases could be used as a resource.

“Historically, what has happened when people have developed in rural areas they found shallow gases in their water wells and used them as a resource to power lights,” North Dakota Geologist Fred Anderson said.

Anderson, who works for the Department of Mineral Resources in Bismarck, said this occurred in the 1800s in the southeastern part of the state, and there have been reports of shallow gases across the state since.

The North Dakota Geological Survey has screened 905 shallow gas occurrences in 52 out of 53 counties in North Dakota, according to a January newsletter put out by Anderson.

For more on this story, go to this post. I first posted this back in January, 2011.

Fortunately for the litigious-affected, hydrocarbons can be fingerprinted.

How Big Is The Bakken: Williston -- Population: 12,000 -- Home To More Than 350 Oil Service Companies

Link here.

Nice Human Interest Story in the Bakken -- Twelve-Year-Old Raises Rescued Canadian Geese

I doubt I would have posted this story, but unknowingly I saw these two geese out at Lewis and Clark State Park last night (Saturday, August 27, 2011).

A pair of geese named Nip and Moose quietly follow the 12-year-old Quentin Corcoran he walks across the lush greenery of this state park about 20 miles east of Williston.

We had just entered the park, when I saw these two Canadian geese near the boat ramp. They looked very out of place, among all the campers, RVs, and people. In urban areas, I'm used to seeing Canadian geese on golf courses but not at boat ramps on rivers. There's no reason for them to be that close to folks when they have the whole river to themselves, so this time these two geese seemed out of place.

And then this morning, in the Williston Herald I see that that these are two of three Canadian geese raised by a local 12-year-old boy who rescued the eggs when the rising flood waters earlier this spring would have covered the eggs:

He found the nest with six eggs in it in the beginning of June while kayaking.“I kept watching (the geese’s mother)” he said. ‘She had a nest in the pipe and the water kept rising. I knew the water would come up and flood the nest.”

.... after the mother had abandoned her eggs Quentin Corcoran brought the six eggs home; three hatched and are now big enough to be on their own. One has already flown off, and Quentin assumes it's only a matter of time before the siblings follow.

Williston Herald Has Nice Story on the 200 Active Drilling Rigs Milestone -- Bakken, North Dakota, USA

Link here to my earlier post, which has the link to the Williston Herald.

Crude By Rail -- Update and Idle Rambling -- Bakken, North Dakota, USA

Last night while driving home from the river, here in the Bakken, I thought about crude-by-rail again.

Then this morning, Don sends me the following Reuters story, about how that very subject:

Rail shipments of crude from the landlocked and oversupplied Midwest to refiners in the Gulf Coast appear set to surge next year, to nearly double the volume now flowing in congested pipelines between the regions.

The shipments, which were rare until this year, have already grown to around 100,000 barrels per day (bpd) in recent months, industry sources told Reuters. Two rail terminals in St. James, Louisiana are receiving much of the crude, while other sites like Houston are taking additional crude.

The daily cargoes between the Midwest (PADD 2) and the Gulf Coast (PADD 3) could triple to 300,000 bpd by late 2012, industry sources said. Logistics firms unveiled plans for several new crude-by-rail terminals over the last four months.

This was also interesting:

Since the Department of Energy does not track crude-by-rail, there's no official data on how much is moving.

The government tracks everything else, I was surprised that it does not track oil shipments by rail. Be that as it may, I started posting about crude-by-rail about six months ago, I suppose. I don't have a good quantitative mind, but when one spends a lot of time in the Bakken, and even more time thinking about it, one starts to pick up on trends.

Warren Buffett is either very, very smart, or very, very lucky (I assume a 30/70 split) -- I am thinking of of his purchase of Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNI) in 2010. But one has to remember, the sage of Omaha was probably stopped at BNI rail crossings all his life growing up in Nebraska. He had lots of time to think about the potentials of rail.