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Sky Could Fall On North Dakota's Oil If We're Not Careful, Shale Boss Says
Submitted by Daniel Graeber via OilPrice.com,
All parties with a collective interest in seeing the North Dakota oil experiment succeed need to work together because, right now, the boss at the largest stakeholder in the Bakken shale says opponents are drawing a bead on the region. And it's not just exploration and production that's a concern.
Oil production from the Bakken shale oil play in North Dakota is increasing at an exponential rate. State government data show production for May, the last full month for which complete information is available, was 977,051 barrels per day, a new all-time high.
On April 28, Continental Resources, the largest stakeholder in the Bakken play, said the field produced its 1 billionth barrel of oil at some point during first quarter 2014. The company's chairman, Harold Hamm, said that, at the rate things are going now, production could hit the 2 million bpd mark by the end of the decade if, and it's a big if, nothing goes wrong.
"We can't have any more issues," Continental's boss said.
In overall production terms, there's not much going wrong in the Bakken play. Though this year's rough winter slowed things down, Adam Sieminski, the top official at the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), said the slump would be erased in the next few months.
But there are other problems needling away in the North Dakota oil patch.
Last week, the FBI said it has only two agents working in the area and needs the industry's help because state law enforcement agencies can't keep up with the growing crime rate. There's even a non-profit group, 4her North Dakota, to combat sex trafficking now.
On the legal margins, meanwhile, it's not just the male members of the oil industry in North Dakota striking it rich. Female strippers, on a good night, are bringing home the bacon to the tune of $2,500 per shift.
Domestic violence and bar brawls are commonplace in parts of the state that boast an unemployment rate of next to zero, but a population boom creating a chronic housing shortage.
The oil sector itself is no stranger to problems. In September, about 20,000 barrels of crude oil spilled in rural Tioga, N.D., and state officials think it will take about two years to clean up the mess.
Three months later, flames shot 100 feet in the air after an eastbound train carrying oil for BNSF Railway hit a westbound train carrying grain in Casselton, N.D. Though no injuries were reported, it was just one of a string of train accidents involving Bakken crude.
A July train accident involving Bakken crude in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, left more than 40 people dead.
That's part of the dark underbelly of the North Dakota oil industry that's not making much of a splash in the circle of energy wonks keeping steady count of wells drilled and barrels produced. But it's part of the narrative that may throw North Dakota's oil future off the rails, in more ways than one.
"We're in the crosshairs," Continental's Hamm said. "If we have anything [go wrong,] they're going to shut us down."
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Thorium Duuuudes!
And BTW.. If the U.S. would only get rid of the stupid fucking rules against mining thorium (cause it's "radioactive" with a 14 BILLION year half life)
We would have all the rare earth materials we can handle and say You No Ten to China!
Here ya go:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium
" If the U.S. would only get rid of the stupid fucking rules against mining thorium"
I presume your planning to be one of the first to sign up to mine Thorium, right? Thank goodness people like you are willing to sacrifice themselve so the rest of us can get our cheap energy! Besides how bad can lung cancer be?
Fuck you.
And you're a misinformed mook to boot.
Does 14 BILLION years mean anything to you fucktard??
The age of the Universe. (13.78 billion years)
Leave the people in North Dakota alone and they'll figure it out for themselves.
If they need housing, developers will get there and start building.
If they need law enforcement, vigilantees can handle it, no requirement to apprehend or even pick-up the bodies. Just let them rot in the street and the bad guys will get the message.
Don't Californicate North Dakota.
Who to believe, GS or your lyin' eyes?
http://l.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/aOBHQP37Hpp8fpyDJYHzTQ--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3...
http://www.theoildrum.com/files/FIGURE1%20BAKKEN%20ADDED%20WELLS%20AND%2...
http://www.theoildrum.com/files/FIGURESD6%20NORMAL%20DISTRIBUTION%20DECL...
http://www.theoildrum.com/files/FIG3%20BAKKEN%20NET%20CASH%20FLOW%20AND%...
'production could hit the 2 million bpd mark by the end of the decade if, and it's a big if, nothing goes wrong.'
The faster they pump, the faster it's depleted and gone. LIfetimes on these wells is far shorter than estimated and drops rapidly when there's more drilling all around. Meanwhile we're wasting gas by burning it off insead of trying to capture it because THAT would be too expensive.... I wonder how bad the aquifers will get from all of this activity - making the places totally uninhabitable - and all that land unfarmable.
Expect a lot of future ghost towns - nothing new in the West. By the time they get built, they'll be no need for them. Look at all the boom towns that are now dead and gone after the gold, silver or whatever ran out.
WATER is the resource they SHOULD be worried about in the long run - that is running out real fast
Cheap energy = cheap water.
Water is probably the most common ressource we have on the entire planet. All we need is energy to take the salt out of it.
So I take that you would go near a Thorium mine then? Are you a hyprocrit or do you just talk out of your ass?
"And you're a misinformed mook to boot"
Hardly, I bet you never took a single class on nuclear engineering. My guess is that you probably don't have an engineer degree at all? Am I right?
and in the mean time,
let's store the waste up Hairy Reid's arse.
"Three months later, flames shot 100 feet in the air after an eastbound train carrying oil for BNSF Railway hit a westbound train..."
BNSF is owned by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway and his oil railcars are one reason why the Keystone pipeline won't ever be built?
BNSF transports six out of every 10 barrels of oil produced in North Dakota:
http://www.startribune.com/business/248301511.html
Headbanger,
given the discussion is about oil and you are talking about Thorium, you are either pulling for Tesla or the Volt. If you aren't then you are demonstrating that you are intellectually bankrupt or a moron...
BTW, what fucking good is Thorium if you do not have a viable commercial design for a reactor running a Thorium fuel cycle?
Thorium reactors are in development. And have been for about 40 years.Still no commercial application. That ought to tell you something.
Thorium doesn't have the added commercial attribute of being the core of a nuclear weapon.
But is does have the attribute of not destroying the planet when there is an accident at one of the power plants.
You are clearly clueless when it comes to the Thorium fuel cycle...
Have we reached peak bullshit yet?
Only two poor, lonely G-Men "working the area", my heart bleeds...sounds like paradise.
(Cept in the winter...lol)
They only get paid a couple of hundred grand for shuffling paper and playing rent-a-cop.
Why does anyone do a real job anymore??? I forget.
We do it for the privilege of being accosted at every turn by fucking ingrates who say we are not working hard enough and of course, to pay for the front row seat of watching Rome burn, as Nero fiddles ;-)
OK, OK, Ok, I get it. We need more than 2 Feebies in the area, we need ecological protection, we need zoning laws and affordable housing, we need diversity coaches, we need plentiful balanced nutritious meals for everybody, we need equitable distribution of jobs and fair ownership of the people's resources, we need honest politicians, we need jobs for thew people who have jobs so everybody has a fucking job who wants a job, including those who maybe don't want jobs or just plain can't decide about anything about jobs, we need to take care of people who are taken advantage of by other people taking advantage of people in the area, we need psychological counselors to counsel those with psychological problems, we need substance abuse counselors to abuse those counseling abusers, we need referees for the fist fights we need more killings to contain the urban sprawl, we need roads, lots and lots of roads so people can get to and from their many many jobs that they can't decide if they want or not so that the roads aren't congested while people are getting to their jobs, we need more shit of every kind, we need better shit of every kind, we need kinder and gentler shit, better people, better educated people because an educated person is more likely to be a happy productive person, meaning they'll be better citizens and contributors to humanity, we need better economic policies to control the development of the economy in the area, and urban planners to plan which areas should be urban, which rural, where the high rises should go and the multifamily housing next to the schools, public transportation and hospitals and museums, we need health care for everybody in the area because the health care in the area is not for everybody but some of the bodies so there is a shortage of health care so we should control the prices so there's equitable pricing of the health care because healthy people are happier people and happier people start less bar-fights and less bar-fights means happier people and if we had more metro and homosexual people in the population that there'd be less bar-fights and alcoholism because metro and homosexuals don't fight in bars like the dumb redneck white Christian men do who are a blight upon humanity and we need less white oil workers, less rednecks and more metro sexual oil workers who would wear nicer clothes meaning they'd be happier on the job and happy oil workers are productive oil workers and Jesus H fucking Christ, who fucking cares, anyhow?
Oh, and the illegal aliens. We need more illegal aliens to vote Democratic so that the redneck heterosexual oil workers don't take over the population of the area because the area won't be happy if the ....
Checking my White Privileged at the door.
Check! Check.
ROTFLMAO!!!...got the black beauty scrip refilled? ;-)
nmewn,
not that i'm a speed/meth expert, but i think they were called black bettys.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R044sleOW6I
and, yes, knucks...great post and everything, but speed kills; and, what's worse, meth/speed is for white-trash and wierdo-queers. (knucks, my brother, i do hope you know i'm just messin around)
knucks, time you crush-up and line some class:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRCkWsoJzZo
just kidding, young ZHealots...all drugs suck -- except caffine, nicotine, alcohol, mary-jane & on the rarest of rare occasion, codine:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwSKNIJefEQ
but, young ZHealots, if you absolutely insist on dying -- and getting it over straight away -- there is one and only one solution for ya!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skxi4NTqFlw
when i'm rushin on my run/
and i feel just like Jesus's son/
well i guess but i just don't know/
and i guess but i just don't know/
...and all the dead bodies piled up in mounds,
janus
^ Brilliant fracking rant!
OK knucks,
As I've said to WB7 a few times, we are not worthy....,
but please don't let that slow you down:)
Knuk, old boy, we need either lots of cash for the strip joints or strippers for girlfriends so that we can hang out with other strippers and help them spend their cash on things we need so that what we have won't bother us too much about what we haven't got...shit - this stuff is contagious! And I wondered how you do it...
Knuckles for Press Secretary!
Yes, try and press that secretary. I think next election whoever comes with a motto: "Cut the bullshit, I know how the shit gets done", could have a fair shot at the title.
Those two agents are busy getting a lap dance at this hour. Our tax dollars are paying for it.
I'd like to see one of you cowards walk up to a field agent and say that to her face. Yeah, that's right, I'd bet even a woman could kick your fat pasty ass.
Ok, smartass, which one you want me to talk to?
The one with the butchwaxed buzzcut or the one with the mustache?
Huh huh huh huh huh?
Nah, the 6'4" 325 lb. transgender one that used to play defensive line(wo)man in the NFL.
Remember, our gender diversity is our strength.
Well, I'm not dumb but I can't understand
Why she walked like a woman but talked like a man
Try the hermaphrodite who just had the sex change operation funded through ObamaCare.
Its the one filing her nails with a flat file but still refuses to ask for directions on how to use it ;-)
Lighten up Francis.
Waiting for the RT article on Igor's deal with BP to develop the Russian "williston" basin. It really should be posted just to show how hard Russian editorials are backing off 4 years of eco-activism financing & smacktalk.
The reasonable ass-essment on Williston US crude:
- Logistics issues: CLR has a production backlog due to tie-ins and rail bottlencks. Expect this to accelerate as those shunted fields waiting for Keystone XL come online and US crude is steamrolled (HA!) by locking up the north depots. Buy for growth, not for yield or promote.
- Production: Fairway production vs. new pool discoveries
- Leverage and field gear delays: yes. to both. are a problem with those who are pursuing an retail facing business model.
The good:
- Bi-lateral production
- waterfloods and ESOR floods are shallowing production blowdown, sweeps on EOR recovery are now projecting 45% recovery on low perm (ie: the shittiest "bakken" pools), which really sucks for the oil bears.
- 4 more zones beyond the Bakken-C member zone.
- Lower basins that sit alongside the Williston's thermal cooking era.
Sensationalist reporting aside, Silicon Valley, Dubai and St.Petersburg are way worse/better for high-roller big-times. North Dakota is actually very tame, ditto with Fort Mac.
Hey, thanks AVR.
Any opinion on the Green River Formation?
https://www.dmr.nd.gov/oilgas/stats/historicalbakkenoilstats.pdf
in the last two years they have doubled the number of wells producing from 3500 to 7500 but "average" production per well is going down "already" with better technology
the shale production life is very short - would love to see average investment to production by well and payout net to WI cash investment - cash on cash
old technology stablized at less than 10 bbls per day where will it end up now
A gay guy once told me he loved the Dakotas. "There's a girl behind every tree and a boy behind every rock."
Let's just say there aren't many trees there.
Boom.
.
Bitch, bitch, bitch.
Surely there is something real going on in the world.
On ZH, the sky is ALWAYS falling.
Except at lac-magentic, where the sky literally fell and we're now going to take another shot:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/lac-m%C3%A9gantic-new-rail-owner-plans-t...
Pipelines uber alles;)
I dunno.
Anybody got the statistics on oil pipeline leaks versus catastrophic fucking horrible inferno rail oil shipments?
And fuck you Warren Buffet !
#Don'tCloseMyRailroad! ;-)
If you live on the east coast chances are you live within a few miles of a pipeline. They fly over and infrared the pipes for leak detection. The potential for accidents, failure etc. is much greater with rail and truck. Especially considering our crumbling rail lines. Bury a pipeline on the San Andreas fault not so much.
Truck, train or pipeline; obvious that pipelines are safer.
When a pipeline bursts, the volume of the spill is vastly higher than in a railway incident. 1 million gallons is a lot of oil to be flowing all over the place. The pipelines are probably fantaswtic for the first 20 years, but at 40 years with minimum maintenance, they start to get a little sketchy.
To hell with your pipeline concerns headbanger, do you not see the trade? There are thousands of pooped out and sleep deprived guys in nd just prime for seduction, literally begging to be relieved of their hard earned wages through temptations of the flesh. Roll on in there with a couple of butterfaced hardbodies, set shit up and make bank.
They'll be 'layin pipe' alright lol
Hey.. Don't call us Shirley.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0A5t5_O8hdA
Can I be Frank with you?
When it's made of the banksters' debt, the sky IS always falling.
Then there's the geological distance/composition between that and the Yellowstone caldera...
There's an opening for a pimp because ol' Whitey G, well, he just didn't make it home last night.
Wow, only two DC US Gestapo agents in the area.
The rest must be out looking for Corzine.
Its just fly over land JCH. Nothing but a bunch of oil wells and farms. We coasters dont need food and energy, the fed will print it man, come on!
Know your enemy
AD
There certainly are people in the northeast who feel that way.
goldman sachs sent the doj out there? the fbi is as welcome as a turd in a punch bowl in that area.
We cannot worry about the dead..... I need my "American Idol," tonight!
Linsey William's elite friend confirmed...lol
Dead people never got in the way of oil production before. Why would it now.
I thought Chicken little was dead?
What about the big elephant in the room, and that is, depletion? What about the lack of positive cash flow and the treadmill of debt that a large number of the drillers/producers are running on? There are far bigger issues than a few trains going up in flames, or hookers plying their trade.
Did everyone catch Obama's latest foreign policy triumph?
"Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, all but said on Sunday that negotiations over the country’s illicit nuclear program are over and that the Islamic Republic’s ideals include destroying America.
“Those [Iranians] who want to promote negotiation and surrender to the oppressors and blame the Islamic Republic as a warmonger in reality commit treason,” Khamenei told a meeting of members of parliament, according to the regime’s Fars News Agency."
http://dailycaller.com/2014/05/25/irans-supreme-leader-jihad-will-contin...
(sorry for the OT)
Bullish for US bombs liberating Iran's energy resources in.......well, after the next commercial break.
Yeah. And he does a surprise trip to Afghanistan and Kazari refuses to meet with him?
It's not OT.
Hell, he oughta run for governor of ND on a immigration and diversity ticket, FFS, for all the good it'll do humanity.
Because right now there aren't enough little brown kids to drone in ND.
Need more imports!
Diversity Ahoy!
We don't mind bombing bombing brown people across the globe for oil, but a guy wants to spend his paycheck to get his rocks off and we have to from a brand new agency to police the situation. We live in a fucked up country.
Strippers tips are unaccountable, clearly .gov needs to open up a whole new front on the War on Women.
Send in the IRS goons before these single mothers of two send their wages to the Caymans and DON'T wind up on welfare...good heavens...think of the lost revenue to the state and the social workers jobs that will be lost!
They need to keep these guys entertained or one of the could go off all Procol Harum and start stealing little girls to marry.
You don't want to see the Wookie warface.
It won't be a whiter shade of pale.
nyuk nyuk nyuk.
The sooner this bubble pops, the better it'll be for all of us.
It's a public resource. Spread the wealth.
If they paid those guys half as much they could hire twice as many.
What exactly is this article about?
Extraneous bullshit, not relative to how much oil is coming out of the ground and going to market ;-)
North dakota strippers, boys! Wonder what variety of hot they'd be.
"Sky Could Fall".... irony here:
"A tornado struck a workers camp in North Dakota's oil patch on Monday..."
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/tornado-damages-trailers-north-dakota...
Reassessing possibility of "god".