South Dakota Doesn't Think Oil Stops at State Line -- Chesapeake Thinks Bakken Oil Stops Well North of the SD State Line

Updates

April 28, 2013: The Rapid City Journal is reporting increased interest in oil drilling in Sturgis area; rigs being seen. Target? Precambrian. Very, very deep.


February 6, 2012: Apparently Chesapeake thinks Bakken oil stops well north of the South Dakota line; Chesapeake is said to be leaving North Dakota because wells are not economically viable in the southwest part of the state.

January 17, 2012: Sierra Club, other faux-environmentalists go to court to block proposed refinery in southeast South Dakota. At 400,000 bopd, this refinery would process as much oil as the new refinery being built by Chinese in Saudi Arabia (announced last week).

Original Post

For those interested in activity in South Dakota, click here and scroll to bottom of page.

Link here (regional links break early and break often):

But South Dakota officials believe there is potential for growth. Iles notes that, although South Dakota’s geologic setting is not quite as favorable as North Dakota, it nevertheless has many of the same rock units. A look at a cross-section of a geophysical log of the rock formations along South Dakota’s northern border shows the similarities.

At a drilling depth of about 8,000 feet, South Dakota has the Three Forks Shale, which Iles says is a large oil producer in North Dakota. Above that is the Minnelusa Formation, which only a county and a half north into North Dakota is producing oil, but there it is called the Tyler Formation. South Dakota also has the Englewood Limestone – a rock unit at the same depth in North Dakota is called by a different name, the Bakken Shale.

“We have similar rock units here, but we are just under-explored,” says Iles.

The Greenhorn Formation is currently the target of exploration near Faith, SD, after the city struck oil while drilling a water well in 2009. Nakota Energy is a small company doing some test drilling there; Pete Sutton with Nakota says they have drilled one well and are waiting on the results, and they will also have a look at the city’s water well where the oil was originally found. [Note: see first two comments -- Chesapeake has an interest in the Greenhorn.]

The first oil in South Dakota was discovered in Harding County in 1954, part of the Red River Formation.

Oil production in South Dakota today occurs in Harding, Custer and Fall River Counties. The Williston Basin lies mainly in North Dakota but comes down into northwestern South Dakota as well, though there is it shallower. A very small part of the Powder River Basin touches the southwestern corner of the state in Custer and Fall River Counties. Luff Exploration is the largest oil producer in the state today, followed by Continental Resources Inc.

For Every Two Cents in Subsidies to Big Oil, $1 to Solar -- Wall Street Journal

Link here -- Wall Street Journal subscription required for full article.

President Obama is expected to seek another $250 billion or so in new stimulus funds next week, with plenty of money for clean energy and the creation of so-called green jobs.

Never mind that no one can seem to find many Americans who got green jobs as a result of the original stimulus spending. Consider two stories.

In the 2009 stimulus, the feds gave nearly $3.2 million in green-energy grants to my county of Arlington, Va., with almost $300,000 used to install solar paneling on the roof of our local library. 

It really doesn't matter any more, but it makes a great story. $250 billion for solar won't create many jobs between now and the 2012 election.  And with the US now $10 trillion in debt, another $250 billion doesn't really matter. But it will play well for the president's base.

From Carpe Diem, quoting the article:

For every two cents of tax subsidies for 'Big Oil,' wind and solar get nearly $1. The environmentalists are for any energy source.... except those that actually work.

Weatherford's Request To Consolidate Operations Approved -- Bakken, North Dakota, USA

Link here (regional links break early and break often).

The Williston City Commission voted to approve Weatherford's proposed zone change to build a facility near Stony Creek Elementary School during a special meeting Thursday evening.

The company is looking to construct an office building on 80-acres of a 160-acre parcel of land on 133rd Avenue Northwest near the school.

I just got back from looking at the BEXP complex about eight miles west of Williston. I believe it sits on 160 acres, also. It has a brand new beautiful building that maybe takes up an acre with parking, access, etc. The other 159 acres: man-camp, pipe storage, truck storage, oil gathering operations.

Something tells me Weathorford is putting a bit more than an office building on 80-acres of a 160-acre parcel of land. If not, that's a huge 80-acre office building.

Peter Kiewit -- Bakken, North Dakota, USA

Updates

The story below features MDU/Knife River. It should be noted that Knife River opened a Western North Dakota Division earlier this year.

Knife River Corporation announced plans today to open a Western North Dakota Division with full aggregate, ready-mix, asphalt and concrete construction services. Headquartered in Williston, division employees will perform private and public work throughout western North Dakota and eastern Montana.

Original Post

Connecting some dots.

I will be posting a bit more on this company when I get a chance. Folks might be interested in reading about Peter Kiewit before I start posting.

For now, I will just mention that I'm noticing a fair number of yellow Peter Kiewit pickup trucks around Williston.

Peter Kiewit home page.

Wiki's page on Kiewit.

Kiewit Corporation, an employee-owned, private company, is a Fortune 500 contractor based in Omaha, Nebraska. It is one of the largest contractors in the world. Recent projects have included several bridge retrofittings in the San Francisco Bay Area, Interstate H-3 project in Hawaii, and building the world's largest geodesic dome at Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha.The company also has significant mining and off-shore operations, but also contracts small grading (dirt moving) projects for residential or commercial development.

From the Williston Herald, June 25, 2011, which I linked on that date:

Terry Metzler, North Dakota operations manager for Granite Peak Development, said Phase I of the project will fill 120 acres of the 289.5-acre, three-phase project.

"It will have 800-1,400 multi-family housing and apartment units and 155 single-family homes," Metzler said.

Located on the corner of 26th Street West and 35th Avenue West, the final two phases will bring the final number of housing units to 2,295. In addition, commercial space for restaurants, a gas station, convenience store and office space will be provided as well as 40 acres for a new school and acreage for a park.

One-half mile by one mile rectangle = 320 acresWith roads in, perhaps a minimum of 1,200 lots at 100' x 80'Those would be large single-home lotsMore likely 75' x 50'

"Four weeks" ago this area was still a farmfield. "Four weeks" later the topsoil has been removed, the lots staked, roads put in (hard dirt roads, not asphalt yet); water, sewer and electrical are put in (at least from what I can tell). All of this in less than two months.

For a PDF file on this new subdivision, click here.

“Kiewit Infrastructure Group will be doing the earthwork, Knife River will be doing all of the infrastructure such as water, sewer, streets and sidewalks, and Sanderson-Stewart is our engineering and design firm”, says Metzler. “I suspect Williston will see construction like they haven’t seen since the levees were built in the 1950’s”, says Metzler.

Someone needs to take an aerial photograph of this activity.

You Think The Government Is Going to Ban Fracking?

In Pennsylvania, Marcellus:

When Resick paid taxes on the lease-signing bonus in 2007 for gas drilling on her 300-acre farm, she was an early player in what has become a tax boon for the state. Lease and royalty income taxes totaled $17 million in 2007; that swelled to more than $100 million from 2010 earnings so far.

The state has maybe half of the collections still to count for 2010, according to figures from the state Department of Revenue.

Since the shale gas rush started in Pennsylvania in 2005, drillers have bored more than 3,700 wells into the gas-rich Marcellus rock layer, a mile or deeper underground, according to the Department of Environmental Protection. They have sought nearly 8,600 well permits through Aug. 12, the most recent statistics available. 

There's no way the government can afford to ban fracking -- that doesn't mean it won't -- but the government, neither the federal government nor the state governments, can afford to shut down fracking. The state budgets would be destroyed as well as hundreds of thousands, if not thousands of thousands of jobs related to the oil industry would be lost.


Today's astounding news that the president shut down the EPA's plan to further constrain the coal industry and the electric utilities spoke volumes.