Spreadsheet, Natural Gas Processing Plants In North Dakota; Dickinson Plans For More Growth West Of Town, Near The New Refinery -- July 26, 2014; Phoning It In (Their Words, Not Mine)

It's hard to find fault with developers trying to stay ahead of all that natural gas and all that flaring. Don happened to come across this spreadsheet detailing all the natural gas processing plants in North Dakota. The jpg is here: http://themilliondollarway.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-road-to-new-england-after-that.html.

Look at the difference between 2010 and 2013.

And then look at the difference between 2013 and 2014, and, then that planned through 2015. It's really quite dramatic.

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West Dickinson Area Plan

Now that it really does appear that one of the nation's first new refineries in decades is about to be completed in North Dakota, Dickinson folks are planning on how to develop the area west of their city, near where the MDU-Calumet refinery will be. The Dickinson Press is reporting:

City officials are getting ready to study how to use approximately 6,100 acres of land west of Dickinson.

The City of Dickinson, in partnership with engineering firm Kadrmas, Lee and Jackson, is preparing to draft a plan to address the rapidly developing area.

The West Dickinson Area Plan will be an addendum to the Dickinson Comprehensive Plan, “Dickinson 2035: Roadmap to the Future,” which was adopted just two years ago.

The study area will consist of the region spanning from 35th Street West south to Patterson Lake, and approximately 116th Avenue Southwest east to 30th Avenue West; it’s not within city limits, but receives some city services.

In recent years, developments in the area have included the Dakota Prairie Refinery, Bakken Oil Express, the Dickinson Interstate 94 Exit 56 interchange, the Dickinson interim bypass route and numerous infrastructure improvement commitments, including an extended sewer line, Day said.

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Global Sea Ice At Record Levels
The Maldives Are Doomed Once This Ice Starts Melting
This Is The Coolest Summer On Record in The US

Steven Goddard/Real Science is reporting: global sea ice is at record levels; eighth (8th) highest on record. In 1992 Algore said sea ice was melting due to global warming. There is an interesting graph at the link. Note the trend with regard to the extent of global sea ice over the past four years: almost straight up. I can't make this stuff up.

Steve Goddard also notes that the summer of 2014 (that would be THIS summer) has turned out to be the coolest summer on record in the US. The graph at this link:

The frequency of 90 degree days in the US has been plummeting for 80 years, and 2014 has had the lowest frequency of 90 degree days through July 23 on record. The only other year which came close was 1992, and that was due to dust in the atmosphere from Mt Pinatubo.

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Phoning It In

The (London) Telegaph is reporting:

The degree to which Barack Obama is now phoning it in – sleepwalking perfunctorily through his second term, amid golf rounds and dinner parties – is astonishing. 

President Obama has emotionally checked out of his job a couple of years early, it seems. How can one tell?

Candidates for president who brazenly assume they are the inevitable victor are sometimes accused of “measuring the drapes” for the White House.

Obama, conversely, seems to be prematurely packing his bags in hopes for an early departure. 

Obama’s not dumb [but he is lazy, his words, not mine], and he’s clearly capable of marshalling an effective propaganda campaign when he wants to. So what explains this series of bad optics, which might be described by PR professionals as political malpractice?

The only thing that makes sense is that he is exhausted and, perhaps, has checked out of the job early.

If Nero fiddled while Rome burned, then Obama is dining out, golfing, and raising money while the world collapses.

I started noticing this back in October, 2013, and Peggy Noonan (WSJ) started writing about earlier this month.  I have the tag "Obama_Lame_Duck" but I'm wondering whether I should have called it "Phoning_It_In"?

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Israel Offers Extended Truce, Hamas Refuses

Hamas In Secret Arms Deal With North Korea

No sooner had the 12-hour truce come to an end, and Hamas started firing rockets into Israel again. Israel offered to extend the truce; Hamas rejected. 

Meanwhile, The (London) Telegraph is reporting that Hamas and North Korea are in a secret arms deal.

Hamas militants are attempting to negotiate a new arms deal with North Korea for missiles and communications equipment that will allow them to maintain their offensive against Israel, according to Western security sources.

Security officials say the deal between Hamas and North Korea is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and is being handled by a Lebanese-based trading company with close ties to the militant Palestinian organization based in east Beirut.

Hamas officials are believed to have already made an initial cash down payment to secure the deal, and are now hoping that North Korea will soon begin shipping extra supplies of weapons to Gaza. 

And then folks wonder why Israel has the Gaza strip coastline blockaded. This is not rocket science.

Previous US presidents would have called this "outrageous" (his word, not mine) but the current administration will let it go.

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Another GM Recall?
General Motors Government Motors Genuine Menace

Get ready for another GM recall. This time: older model Impalas with air bag software problems. If there is a problem with Impalas, I doubt it will be limited to one make/model. It could be a double whammy: if the ignition switch fails and the car comes to a sudden stop, and the air bag does not deploy ...

 
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Handicaps Crossing

My hunch is that President Obama's handicap is decreasing while Tiger Woods' handicap is increasing. It's very possible, the two handicaps will cross sometime in 2018.  Someday you can say you read it here first.

Disclaimer: this is not a sports column. Do not quote anything from this site as accurate if it pertains to sports, or anything you think you might have read here that might possibly have related to sports. Definitely don't make any Las Vegas bets based on what you read here. 

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A Note To The Granddaughters

Earlier I posted a note for the granddaughters about my experience at LAX today. As I watched the buses go by with their destinations in LED (e.g., Van Nuys), I thought about the man who probably did more than anyone to promote this city (Los Angeles): Johnny Carson. 

The Road To New England (After That Brief Detour In Colorado) Has Its Roots In California, 1980

This is a great article, a must-read, for those following the blog. A huge thanks to Don for sending it my way. The American Spectator reports

In 1980, under the first administration of Governor Jerry Brown, California decided it wasn’t going to build any more power plants but would follow Amory Lovins’ “soft path,” opting instead for conservation and renewable energy. By 2000, with the new digital economy sucking up electricity, a drought in the Pacific Northwest cut hydropower output and the state found itself facing the Great California Electrical Shortage.

You know what happened next. For weeks the Golden State struggled to find enough electricity to power its traffic lights. Brownouts and blackouts cascaded across the state while businesses fired up smoke-belching diesel generators to keep the lights on. Governor Gray Davis finally got booted out of office but the state didn’t rescue itself until it threw up 12,000 megawatts of new natural gas plants.

At that point California officials decided that the whole thing had been engineered by Enron and other out-of-state merchant providers and the charges and lawsuits flew. No Democrat ever learned a lesson. The state is now 60 percent dependent on natural gas for its electricity — twice the national average — and its electric bills are almost twice that of surrounding states. Industry is headed for the door.

So how have California’s liberal counterparts on the East Coast managed to avoid the same fate? You’d think a region that could produce Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders plus legions of college students trained to hate fossil fuels would have no trouble pursuing the same green dreams. Well, it’s about to happen. In the next few years New England will be facing a full-scale power shortage.

Last week the governors of the six New England states met in an emergency session at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, to discuss what to do about the pending crisis. Significantly, they asked the premiers of five of Canada’s provinces to attend. That makes sense because if the region is going to get electricity from anywhere it is probably going to be from north of the border.

The article continues at the link. 

Fact check. The writer says: California is now 60 percent dependent on natural gas for its electricity — twice the national average — and its electric bills are almost twice that of surrounding states. Industry is headed for the door. The US government says otherwise. It's possible the writer was comparing a different set of metrics than what I was looking at or what the EIA was reporting.

It is true, according to the EIA, if you take "all sectors," the cost of electricity in California is about 12 cents/kWh compared to 9 cents for Oregon and 10 cents for Arizona. It is possible that the "electric bills are twice those of neighboring states" but that would be due to greater use of electricity by Californians (for air conditioning, no doubt, and longer commutes).

These are the residential rates for electricity as supplied by the EIA, cents/kWh, 2014 (2013):

• California: 10 (16)
• Oregon: 10 (10)
• Washington (with all that hydroelectric power): 9 (9)

• Montana: 10 (10)
• Nevada: 14 (13)
• Colorado: 12 (12)

• North Dakota: 9 (9)
• South Dakota: 10 (9)
• Iowa (with all that wind power): 12 (11)
• Minnesota (with all those mandates): 12 (12)

• Wisconsin: 14 (14)
• Michigan (with all those activists): 15 (14) 
• Illinois: 12 (11)

• New York (bans fracking; hates fossil fuel): 20 (18)
• Pennsylvania (loves fracking): 13 (13)

The Road to New England

• Vermont 18 (18)
• Rhode Island 18 (14)
• New Hampshire: 18 (17) -- already high and trending higher
• Massachusetts: 18 (15) -- already high and trending higher
• Connecticut: 20 (17) -- already high and trending higher

WallStreetCheatSheet looks at the ten states with most expensive electricity. New Hampshire was #3: With little in the way of production and high costs from nuclear energy, New Hampshire residents are faced with energy prices much higher than the national average, coming in at $28.35 per one million BTUs.

Vermont was #2: One of the biggest factors playing into Vermont’s high energy costs are that 70 percent of the state’s electricity is generated by nuclear power. That’s a higher percentage than any other state.

And, finally, drum roll ... #1 is Hawaii, but that's an outlier based on logistics. The pleasant climate, of course, offsets some of the costs, which cannot be said for Vermont and New Hampshire with their severe winters (worse than North Dakota's?).

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A Note to the Granddaughters

We had a wonderful southwestern US vacation, driving from Dallas to Los Angeles via the Grand Canyon with another full day in the Albuquerque area. Then almost a full three weeks in San Pedro and Huntington Beach, California.

Today, the granddaughters will depart, in another couple of hours, and fly to Louisville, KY.

LAX has three entry points: Sepulveda from the north; Century Blvd from the east; and, Sepulveda from the south. The I-105 enters the Sepulveda on the south side. The main entry point, Century Blvd was closed last night for construction and will remain closed for 56 hours. We were told that traffic would be horrendous.

We drove north from San Pedro, leaving about 8:15 a.m. Saturday morning, on the I-110, and then the I-405 toward Santa Monica. We took the El Segundo exit off I-405 (absolutely no traffic). Sepulveda going north was almost traffic-free. We hit the green light at the Sepulveda - I-105 connection and sailed through. There was really no traffic going into LAX this morning.

It was a different story inside. The Delta line was the longest we had ever seen, streaming from the check-in area to almost the next terminal. The good news: Delta's Special Services line was very, very short, and that's where the granddaughters were checked in. While waiting, I noted that the Delta line moved very quickly and is now almost non-existent: folks must have all arrived at the same time, very early, to beat the horrendous traffic that was predicted. It took a fair amount of time to get the granddaughters checked in so that May could go through security with them and get them to their gate. I am waiting outside the security area.

It's about 10:20 a.m. and the granddaughters depart at 11:55 a.m., I believe.

By the way, huge kudos to the Delta folks for dealing with so many customers. Everything seemed to move along very smoothly.

The airport authority also did a great job managing the new traffic flow due to new construction.

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A Note to the Granddaughters

In a recent post, I said I had a love-hate relationship with Los Angeles: some days I love it, other days not so much, but perhaps "hate" was too strong a word. 

In the autumn of 1972, I flew out to Los Angeles for an interview. I barely had enough money for the flight, so I planned (and did) hitchhike back to Sioux Falls, SD, after the interview. 

I remember the day I flew into Los Angeles for the first time as vividly as if it had occurred yesterday. I was "temporarily blinded" by the very bright sunshine. The airport seemed immense. I walked over to "information" asking which direction my destination lay. 

They said I could never walk that far, and suggested I take a bus to Chinatown (which I did) and then walk the rest of the way (which I did).

Today, with three hours to spare waiting for the granddaughters to depart, I took a walk, leaving LAX and headed east on Century Blvd. May was at the departure gate with the girls.

It was slightly (but only slightly) difficult finding the way out of the airport on foot. It appears that one can easily walk towards the city on the west-bound boulevard but not the east-bound boulevard. And there it was: the first non-airport restaurant, a Subway, about a 15-minute walk from terminal 5, or I suppose about a 10-minute walk from terminal 1, the first terminal upon entering the airport. I was surprised at the number of pilots that were walking from the surrounding high-rise high-end luxury hotels to the airport. I assume this was about the only exercise many of them get in their day-to-day work.

I'm now back at the airport, the plane has pushed back, and we can leave as soon as the plane is airborne. 

Meanwhile, across from me the police have just brought in a bomb-sniffing dog to examine a piece of abandoned luggage. I am amazed at all the luggage that seems to be left behind. I taught the granddaughter to count the number of items they carry unto the plane. My hunch is they already knew to do that because the older one, when asked, said she had five items, including a ribbon she tied around the new hardcover book that she picked up yesterday. 

On my walk, it looked like traffic was amazingly light. I doubt there will be any trouble getting back on Sepulveda, going south, to catch the I-405. 

I guess this would be one of the days I "love" LA.

Here comes May now.

Week 30: July 20, 2014 -- July 26, 2014

Operations
North Dakota expects "big surge" in production this summer
Random update on an incredible Halcon well in McGregory Buttes
At 197, active rigs in North Dakota nears 200
Newfield reports a gusher
A big day for some nice wells (XTO, Oasis reporting)
MDU sells 4,363 mineral acres in Mountrail County; about $46,000/acre

Derailments
A "minor" Bakken crude oil train derailment in Seattle

Economy
Shale revolution changing cities across America 
Delta Airlines signs for five more years of Bakken crude oil
Stabilizers: the next big story in the Bakken

Miscellaneous
Big fire in Williston; Red River Supply

Ten (10) New Permits On A Very Slow Friday -- July 25, 2014; NDIC Not Reporting Historical Rig Counts Consistently; The Big Story -- Why Is North Korea So Quiet?

NOTE: The NDIC is intermittently not including various years (most notably 2013 and 2009) when reporting the number of active rigs. I had not noticed that, but scrolling through the active rigs data, this started happening over the past week or so. Note, for example, today: 2013 and 2009 data is not included. An alert reader caught this. I don't know the reason.

Active rigs:

	7/25/2014	07/25/2012	07/25/2011	07/25/2010	07/25/2008
Active Rigs	193	208	179	138	76

Ten (10) new permits --

• Operators: Oasis (4), Petro-Hunt (2), Statoil, Whiting, Crescent Point, Samson Resources
• Fields: Foothills (Burke), Baker (McKenzie), North Tioga (Burke), Stony Creek (Williams) Sanish (mountrail), Ellisville (Williams), Blooming Prairie (Divide)
• Comments:

Wells coming off the confidential list today were posted earlier today; see sidebar at the right.

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New North Dakota Refinery Almost Complete

BillingsGazett is reporting:

Construction of an oil refinery near Dickinson is about three-fourths complete, and most of the jobs that will be created there have already been filled.

Bismarck-based MDU Resources Group Inc. and Indianapolis-based Calumet Specialty Products Partners are building the $350 million Dakota Prairie Refinery. Construction started in March 2013. The facility is slated to be operating late this year.

The refinery will employ about 90 workers. About 70 of the positions already have been filled by people with a lot of experience in the industry, according to MDU.

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ONEOK To Invest $450 Million In SCOOP

TulsaWorld is reporting:

ONEOK Partners LP announced Thursday that it plans to invest between $365 million to $470 million on natural gas projects in the emerging South Central Oklahoma Oil Province (SCOOP) over the next two years.

The Tulsa-based energy infrastructure firm will build a new natural gas processing plant in Grady and Stephens counties. The planned Knox plant will eventually process up to 200 million cubic feet in natural gas per day, according to the ONEOK release.

The "average" ONEOK natural gas processing plant in the North Dakota Bakken is rated at 100 million cubic feet of natural gas per day.

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When Is A Cease-Fire Not A Cease-Fire? When Israel Is Involved

Fox News is reporting:

Israel and Hamas announced a 12-hour humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza for Saturday, only hours after Israel's security cabinet unanimously rejected U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry's proposal for a temporary cease-fire to allow indirect talks.

In announcing late Friday that it would observe the "humanitarian window" from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday, Israel said that during that time "we'll continue to locate and neutralize terror tunnels."

It also warned the military "shall respond if terrorists choose to exploit" the lull to attack Israeli troops "or fire at Israeli civilians."

A Hamas spokesman, Sami Abu Zuhri, said earlier Friday that the group had agreed to a 12-hour lull, starting at 8 a.m.

Any bets how long this 12-hour cease fire between modern-day Hatfields and McCoys will last? I give it six hours. [Apparently the cease fire did not last an hour: "Israeli-Hamas forces continue to fight despite cease fire."]

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The Obama Legacy: Household Net Worth Plummets

The New York Times is reporting:

The inflation-adjusted net worth for the typical household was $87,992 in 2003. Ten years later, it was only $56,335, or a 36 percent decline, according to a study financed by the Russell Sage Foundation. Those are the figures for a household at the median point in the wealth distribution — the level at which there are an equal number of households whose worth is higher and lower. But during the same period, the net worth of wealthy households increased substantially. 

No, the entire "loss" did not happen under the Obama administration, but the expectations that his administration would turn "this" around.

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The Obama Legacy: No More Oil From Libya

Fox News is reporting:

The United States shut down its embassy in Libya Saturday and evacuated its diplomats to neighboring Tunisia under U.S. military escort amid a significant deterioration in security in Tripoli as fighting intensified between rival militias, the State Department said. 

"Due to the ongoing violence resulting from clashes between Libyan militias in the immediate vicinity of the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, we have temporarily relocated all of our personnel out of Libya," spokeswoman Marie Harf said.

The withdrawal underscored the Obama administration's concern about the heightened risk to American diplomats abroad, particularly in Libya where memories of the deadly 2012 attack on the U.S. mission in the eastern city of Benghazi are still vivid and the political uproar over it remain fresh ahead of a new congressional investigation into the incident. A senior military official told Fox News the Pentagon has been advising the State Department leave the post for weeks. 

Wow, talk about dithering. Never learns. It will be interesting to see the new definition of "temporarily."

President Obama will leave office with the world significantly worse off than the found it when he assumed the presidency.  

The big story: why is North Korea so quiet?
 

The Road To New England Takes A Detour Through Colorado -- July 25, 2014

This is from The Washington Post -- yes, the liberal media newspaper -- not from Fox News. As you read the story, remember that the US has the least expensive energy in the world, and is currently experiencing a glut of natural gas -- so much natural gas that a lot of folks want to export it.

It turns out that Germany is not the only place where electricity is considered a "residential luxury." A big "thanks" to Steven for sending the link. The Washington Post is reporting (at the link, scroll down):

Colorado is way ahead of the rest of the country on moving towards cleaner energy. But if that's not managed carefully, energy bills can skyrocket. 

That's the headline. Actually, the headline seems to be very, very off the mark. Energy bills in Colorado have already skyrocketed, at least for some.

It’s not just the light switches, though. Ever since her power was shut off in 2010, Garcia has adopted a Depression-era obsessiveness: She doesn’t use the oven in the summer, because it heats up the house, and uses only one small air conditioner.

Oh, and forget about machine-washed dishes; Garcia does them by hand (the battle is evident in the pile at the sink). The toaster and microwave bear sticky notes ordering the user to unplug them afterward, lest they continue drawing energy from the sockets. “You think turning it off is enough, and it’s not,” she admonishes.

And yet, no matter how much she rations and cuts, Garcia cannot keep ahead of the fast rise in rates. She runs a daycare out of her home, so her monthly bill of about $200 is already higher than average in Pueblo, where the residential rate per kilowatt hour has risen 26 percent since 2010 — and on a per-household basis, is now among the highest in the state (which seems odd, consider her rent for the house is only $850).

So what's the story?

Garcia’s extreme frugality is, indirectly, the result of coal plants shutting down as Colorado transitions to renewable energy. But in Pueblo, it happened in a way that has left poor consumers gasping for relief.

To a wealthy community, skyrocketing electricity rates might not have much of an impact: When you have a decent-paying job, what’s a few more dollars a month on your utility bill?

Pueblo is not that kind of place. With a poverty rate of 18.1 percent, incomes far below the state average and a third of the population on some sort of public assistance, those few dollars can make a big difference here.

So why have rates jumped so much, so fast? The local utility would point to environmental regulations and the sudden disappearance of supply from its competitor. Local officials and environmentalists would cite the utility’s business strategy.
The customers were caught in the middle.

Soon after buying the local utility, Black Hills Energy opted to replace nearly all its cheap coal capacity with natural gas essentially overnight — which means ratepayers are footing some big infrastructure bills all at once.

This is why today's RNB Energy post is so relevant.

It looks like the road to New England took a detour through Colorado.

[Later: when I wrote the above, I was going to add a note that this whole story sounds a bit bogus -- I find it incredible that someone as frugal as Ms Garcia could be paying as much as $200/month and, at that, she is paying more than other residents.

A close reading of the story provides the explanation, perhaps, something the Washington Post writer conveniently attempted to gloss over: Ms Garcia is running a business from her home. Of course, her electric bill would be higher if she is running a business from her home. It would be interesting to know the square footage of her business, and exactly what is meant by "a small air conditioner." Small, compared to what? It would be interesting to know what the utility costs directly associated with her business are.

Don sent me the Black Hills Power utility rates for Colorado and the rates are among the least expensive in the nation:

• 8 cents/kWh for the first 1,000 kWh
• and as little as 6.6 cents/kWh for any usage above 1,000 kWh during nine months of the year (October through May)

This whole story sounds a bit bogus. I agree that switching from coal (really, really cheap) to natural gas (really cheap) all at once, and adding in mandated wind and solar (really, really expensive) is the "road to New England."]

Don, with a fairly typical midwestern home says he will use about 550 kWh in the month of June. Figuring backwards, Ms Garcia, at $200/month utility bill, was using, in comparison, about 2,215 kWh of electricity. Something fishy is going on. We don't know the whole story.

Don reminded me that 24/7 lights to grow marijuana is extremely energy intensive; Colorado allows personal marijuana production, I believe, but don't take my word for it. I don't follow the Colorado marijuana laws all that closely.

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A Familiar Story

Statoil beats 2Q14 earnings estimates but misses on revenues. Reports earning 63 cents vs consensus of 58 cents.