New Transloading Facility Southwest Of Williston?

NSTENERGY.COM

Our terminal in East Fairview, North Dakota is strategically located at the epicenter for inbound and outbound transloading in the Bakken Shale and Williston Basin regions of North Dakota. 

Situated in McKenzie County on the border of North Dakota and Montana, NorthStar Transloading provides your company with an extensive national transportation network. 

The 400 acre state-of-the-art terminal provides unit and manifest train switching and transloading. 

Our BNSF-served rail yard is positioned and designed to support the ever increasing demand for rail transportation in and out of the Bakken region of North Dakota and the facility is designed to sustain continued growth as demand in the Bakken continues to increase.

NorthStar Transloading aims to be the premier transload partner for moving crude to high value markets and shipping industry aggregates into the region.  Our industry experts can help you streamline your transportation and logistics needs and help you meet your operation deadlines.

I'm not sure if it can be seen on google satellite images, but one possible location is a few miles east of East Fairview.

The best part of this story: the new facility is located well outside Williston, further de-conflicting all the transportation issues in that city.

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The SeekingAlpha article is a good article; lots of story lines; lots of things to think about. The article has to do with corporate profits. But is was two comments that caught my attention. The first comment:

The next great corporate savings will be healthcare, or should I say not having to pay for it. When large corporations realize how much more they can save by pushing their employees to ACA there will be another stair step in corporate profits. 

I agree 100%. I was surprised, the article said so little about ObamaCare.

The second comment:

They won't eliminate it [health care costs] completely. They'll pay their employees enough to go out and buy Obamacare. But they'll lose the aggravation and the potential legal liability. But they won't save a lot, there's still no such thing as a free lunch. 

There is no such thing as a "free lunch," but if one can set one's own price for lunch, that's not a bad deal.

What these folks are missing is "predictability." High cost of health care is/was an issue for corporations, but many of them could pass on the cost to their customers. The real problem for Corporate America was the unpredictability of annual increases in the health care costs. They simply couldn't budget what their costs were going to be. 

By providing their employees a monthly stipend to find their own health care program, Corporate America can now plan how much they will spend on health care in the out years. I'm not saying ObamaCare will solve all the health care issues CA faces but it will certainly go a long way to making things easier for bigger corporations and more nimble corporations.  

Louisiana: On The Road To New England

This is a most interesting op-ed.

Because of the way the pipelines run in Louisiana, the state could actually have to import natural gas.

Think of Louisiana as a north half and a south half.

The north half has the Haynesville and more than enough natural gas.

The south half has the urban centers and industrial petrochemical plants that need natural gas.

And therein lies the problem. There is inadequate pipeline infrastructure running between the north and the south. The op-ed suggests it won't be a slam dunk to solve this problem.

Does this sound familiar?

[Actually, I don't see a problem. The governor of Texas will be more than happy to ship natural gas acors the Texas-Louisiana state line.]

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I Think He Meant Just This Until ObamaCare Kicked In

Flashback, 2008: "Here are the facts, I can make a firm pledge, under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes." [If you don't enroll, you pay a penalty, but it's not a tax.]

Summary Of March Permits, North Dakota, USA; The Smithsonian Is Finally Getting It's Own T Rex -- From The Williston Basin

FOR THE MONTH OF MARCH, 2014 (ONE MONTH) 

Active rigs: Averaged about 196 active rigs, many of them drilling saltwater disposal wells.

Permits by operator (selected):

• American Eagle: 5 (0 last month)
• BR: 7 (14 last month)
• CLR: 52 (7 last month; 21 in January)
• Emerald Oil: 6 (1 last month)
• EOG: 11 (13 last month)
• ERF: 0
• Fidelity: 2 (1 last month)
• Hess: 20 (18 last month)
• HRC: 0 (1 last month)
• KOG: 19 (0 last month)
• MRO: 5 (1 last month)
• Murex: 0
• Newfield: 2
• Oasis: 18 (30 last month)
• OXY USA: 8 
• Petro-Hunt: 12
• QEP:  8
• Slawson:  9
• SM Energy:  8
• Statoil:  10
• Triangle:  3
• Whiting: 18
• WPX:  0
• XTO: 12

Permits by county (Williams was the big mover in February):

• Divide: 21
• Dunn: 24
• McKenzie: 74
• Mountrail: 58
• Williams: 44

Permits by field, selected:

• Alger: 0
• Alkali Creek: 33
• Banks: 7
• Bear Den: 0
• Big Bend: 3
• Blue Buttes: 0
• Chimney Butte:  1
• Corral Creek: 13 
• Cottonwood: 14 (after original post; see comments)
• Eagle Nest:  0
• Elidah:  2
• Grail:   8
• Little Knife: 3
• Parshall: 11
• Poe:  1
• Sanish:  8
• Siverston:  3

Permits for wildcat wells:   3

Permits for the year (end of March): 685 -- on track for 2,778 permits for calendar year, which would be a record, but down significantly from projection of 2,990 at end of January.

Disclaimer: summary totals from my personal database; not from NDIC (original source was the NDIC). There may be errors in the data and there may be typographical errors. 

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A Note to the Granddaughters

Wow, this is a huge story. The Smithsonian is finally getting its own T rex. The Billings Gazette is reporting:

Next week, the now nearly complete fossilized skeleton of the Tyrannosaurus rex dinosaur that Wankel discovered in 1988 in Eastern Montana will be shipped from the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman to the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.

There, the Wankel rex will be on loan for 50 years as the centerpiece of the museum’s new 31,000-square-foot national fossil hall, which will open in 2019.

“It’s about time the Smithsonian had their own T. rex,” said Mark Robinson, marketing director at the Museum of the Rockies. “Seven million people a year will be seeing it, and we’re OK with that. It will be good exposure for the Museum of the Rockies, Montana State University and the state.”

The Bakken Boom Will Never Be Repeated In California

Reuters through Rigzone is reporting:

Republican lawmakers said on Friday over regulation has prevented a shale oil boom in California and if eased, could boost production in the state and reduce its dependence on foreign energy.

With more than an estimated 15 billion barrels of oil, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, California's Monterey shale formation is twice as large as North Dakota's Bakken formation. That state has risen to become the second-largest U.S. oil producer in recent years, behind Texas.

California had the third-largest U.S. oil output in 2013, narrowly ahead of Alaska, but could produce far more if the state aggressively moved to develop its energy resources, lawmakers said at a House Natural Resources committee hearing. "The challenge now is not our ability to find it, it's the ability of government allowing us to be able to produce it in a sound way," said Republican Kevin McCarthy, who represents California's oil-producing Kern county. 

Actually, that's not true. The geology in California caused by tectonic plate shifts suggest that fracking won't be a slam dunk. 

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North Dakota ObamaCare Numbers

Approximately 55 to 60% of those who enroll in ObamaCare in North Dakota actually paid first-month premiums. 

Two comments: first, my hunch is that North Dakota has a higher rate of first-month premium payers than most other states; and, second, most insurers are going to exaggerate the numbers to prevent more disillusionment with the program.

So, there you have it. Maybe 50% of enrollees will pay their first-month premium. The good news: 100% of enrollees will get their pre-filled voter registration cards.

PetroBras Can't Buy A Break; It's One Thing To Drop A Wrench Into A Bakken Well; Can You Imagine Dropping $2 Million Worth Of Pipe Into The Ocean? PetroBras Can; A Day In The Life

I find this so incredibly interesting.

I invested in Petrobras some years ago, but held the stock less than six months when I realized the challenges facing the country. I have blogged often on the failure of Petrobras to live up to the initial hype.

Now this update. Reuters through Rigzone is reporting:

Brazilian state-run oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA suffered a setback in its effort to boost oil output last month when Italian contractor Saipem SpA dropped a 2.3 km steel pipe into the Atlantic Ocean.

On March 16, rigging failed as it was being used to wrangle the pipe into position on a floating oil platform. The high-grade, metal-alloy tubes plunged about 1,800 meters (5,900 feet) to the seabed, a total, crumpled loss.

The pipe itself was worth about $2 million, but the cost of the accident will be much higher, two sources with direct knowledge of the situation told Reuters. By setting back efforts to expand Roncador, Brazil's No. 2 oilfield, by at least a month, Petrobras will lose tens of millions of dollars in oil output, salaries and equipment leases when it can least afford it.

The accident was the latest in a series of setbacks as Petrobras has struggled to transform giant new offshore discoveries into increased output, despite a $221 billion five-year investment plan.

I love the next quote:

"The series of management and engineering problems the company faces is flabbergasting," said Cleveland Jones, a professor and researcher with Brazil's National Petroleum and Gas Institute at the State University of Rio de Janeiro.

Just yesterday I posted that a $10 million well in the Bakken is a bargain from a global perspective. That seems especially true when one looks at Petrobras and Kashagan.

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A Note to the Granddaughter

A Day In The Life

My only responsibility today was to get our younger granddaughter to soccer on time this morning. Moments ago I was called by my daughter; she was at work but she wanted me to know that my son-in-law / granddaughter's father would be taking the granddaughters to soccer and I was free. I will still go to the soccer game but due to picture-taking, etc., I don't have to arrive as early as expected.

I was given the best gift of all: time:

One extra hour.

I was on my way out of Starbucks when I got the call so I pressed on. I rode to Target to see what was new; nothing. I headed home. Toast for breakfast. The Beatles' Abbey Road.

The "Review" section of the weekend edition of the WSJ.

Wow, this is a great section this week. Look at these book reviews:

In Paradise, Peter Matthiesen. The atrocity exhibition: how much cheapening of the Holocaust are we willing to accept in the name of art?

Updike, Adam Begley; and, The Collected Stories, John Updike. What made Rabbit write? Updike confessed he 'drank up women's tears and spat them out / as 10-point Janson, Roman and ital.'

Faisal I of Iraq, Ali A Allawi. A king worthy of the title. Faisal carried authority whether wearing a kaffiyeh or a Chesterfield coat.

The Most Dangerous Man in America, Mark Perry. The ungovernable general. In 1932, Douglas MacArthur personally led troops to expel a group of protesting veterans from the city of Washington and burn their encampment.

Delphi, Michael Scott. Go ask Apollo. Cities in the 8th century BC confronted new problems: Should we found a colony? Allow this one man to rule?

Encounters at the Heart of the World, Elizabeth A. Fenn. The Okipa combined the sun dance with sexually charged re-enactments of Mandan origin stories. The article includes a photo of a Mandan-style lodge at North Dakota's Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park. The article begins:

The opinions of chauvinistic New Yorkers and geographical nitpickers notwithstanding, the exact center of North America is the Cornerstone Cafe in Rugby, ND, where a rock obelisk marks the spot. About a hundred miles to the southwest lies the ancestral homeland of the Mandan people, where the Heart River empties into the Missouri. Maybe 150 miles northwest of that confluence, and an equal distance west of Rugby, is the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, where Mandans live today. For them, these landscapes have always been "the heart of the world."

The review takes up half a page. Awesome. 

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Along with these reviews, some regular columns including Amanda Foreman, "Historically Speaking." Her column today: the lesson of the last passenger pigeon. She died in what scientists call the Sixth Extinction. I can't wait to read the column. I hope she includes the North American bison which was on its way to extinction well before the white man finished him off.

A review of fine art by John Wilmerding, "Ship Starlight in the Fog," Fitz Henry Lane, about 1860. Best known for recording the nuances of early-morning light and sunset, Fitz Henry Lane produced just a half-dozen foggy views. "Ship Starlight in the Fog" was considered one of his most beautiful.

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In addition to all that there are two long, long articles, the first, "What Have All The Workers Gone?" The second: "The smart way to do fracking. Plug leaks, run more tests and build better wells." I just love these armchair experts (sort of like me, smile). The author of this article, Russell Gold covers the energy industry for The WSJ and is the author of The Boom: How Fracking Ignited the American Energy Revolution and Changed the World to be released April 8, 2014.

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And now, off to that soccer game.