Category: Shale Oil

NEW YORK, Sept. 11 (UPI) — The expansion of a project in the Bakken reserve area of North Dakota will cut down on costs in part due to the use of flared natural gas, project leaders said. The U.S. subsidiary of Norwegian energy company Statoil, along with a joint venture between General Electric and Ferus Natural Gas Fuels, announced plans to expand the so-called Last Mile project in order to capture flared natural gas and use it to power Statoil’s drilling operations in North Dakota. "By using this captured natural gas in place of diesel in our drilling and hydraulic fracturing operations, we are further reducing emissions and costs," Lance Langford, Statoil’s vice president for Bakken development and production, said in a statement Wednesday. Natural gas associated with the vast shale oil deposits in the states is burned off, or flared, because of a lack of processing capabilities. North […]

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Pipeline Construction Pipeline Construction | Click to Enlarge Enterprise Products Partners L.P. began a binding open commitment period in early Sept. of 2014 to determine shipper demand for capacity on a proposed new pipeline from the Williston Basin of North Dakota to the Cushing hub in Oklahoma. The 30-inch diameter, 1200-mile pipeline is expected to have an initial capacity of approximately 340,000 b/d of crude oil, expandable to more than 700,000 . Company officials say the Bakken-to-Cushing pipeline would also serve the Powder River and Denver-Julesburg (“DJ”) Basins, and have the capability to transport up to six grades of crude oil and products, including Rockies Condensate and Processed Condensate. Subject to sufficient customer commitments, the pipeline is expected to begin service in stages, starting with the DJ-to-Cushing portion in the fourth quarter of 2016, and should be fully operational by the third quarter of 2017. “This pipeline offers a reliable, safe, and economical solution that promotes continued development […]

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Water drawn from Steve Lipsky’s property in Parker County, Texas, burns, he says, from the high amount of methane introduced into the water supply by a fracking operation near his home. Les Stone for Al Jazeera America Steve Lipsky fracking What started as a short YouTube video and a couple of local news interviews about a Texas landowner being able to light his water on fire has ballooned into a free speech fight that’s being closely watched by anti-fracking activists across the country. Steve Lipsky has complained for years that fracking company Range Resources polluted his drinking water and streams that run through his property. The company sued him in 2011 for defaming its reputation for environmental stewardship. Now Lipsky will have a chance to argue his case in front of the Texas Supreme Court,  The Texas Tribune reported this week . The court will decide whether his right […]

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Saskatchewan Ethane Processing Plant Saskatchewan Ethane Processing Plant|Click to Enlarge The  Bakken-Three Forks rig count  stayed flat at 191 rigs running across our coverage area by the end of last week. The NDIC notes 198 rigs are active in North Dakota, but around 15 of those are in the process of moving in and rigging up. In recent Bakken news, Pembina Pipeline Corp. announced in early Sept. 2014 it will acquire Bakken midstream assets for $650-million from entities affiliated with Riverstone Holdings, LLC. The U.S. rig count increased by 11 to 1,925 rigs running by the end of last week. A total of 340 rigs were targeting natural gas (two more than  the previous week) and 1,584 were targeting oil in the U.S. (nine more than the previous week). The remainder were drilling service wells (e.g. disposal wells, injection wells, etc.).  192  rigs are running in the Williston Basin across MT, ND, and SD.  […]

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Bloomberg Markets Magazine Floyd Wilson raps his fingertips against the polished conference table. He’s just been asked, for a second time, how he reacted when his Halcon Resources Corp. (HK) wrote off $1.2 billion last year after disappointing results in two key prospects. Wilson once told investors that the acreage might contain the equivalent of 1.2 billion barrels of oil. He fixes his interlocutor with a blue-eyed stare and leans forward. At 67, he bench-presses 250 pounds (110 kilograms) and looks it. Outside the expansive windows of his 67th-floor executive suite, downtown Houston steams in its July smog . He responds, unsmiling, with a one-syllable obscenity: “F—.” Wilson has reason to curse, Bloomberg Markets magazine will report in its October issue. On the wall behind him hang framed stock certificates of the four public energy companies he’s built in his 44-year career. The third, Petrohawk Energy Corp., discovered the […]

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North Dakota is in the midst of an oil boom. Farmers are coping with the environmental and financial costs of wastewater spills from the drilling. Dermot Tatlow / LAIF / Redux ANTLER, N.D. — Last summer, in a wet, remote section of farm country in Bottineau County, landowner Mike Artz and his two neighbors discovered that a ruptured pipeline was spewing contaminated wastewater into his crop fields. “We saw all this oil on the low area, and all this salt water spread out beyond it,” said his neighbor Larry Peterson, who works as a farmer and an oil-shale contractor. “The water ran out into the wetland.” It was August, and all across Artz’s farm the barley crop was just reaching maturity. But near the spill, the dead stalks had undeveloped kernels, which, the farmers knew, meant that the barley had been contaminated weeks earlier. Soon after, state testing of […]

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Oil Rail Car Image Crude Oil Rail Car | Click to Enlarge At the Surface Transportation Board (STB) hearing this week in Fargo, ND, officials from the state and other upper Midwestern states urged U.S. regulators to put pressure on railroads to fix issues that are blocking grain shipments. The culprit some believe is the oil & gas industry – in August, approximately 60% of oil produced in North Dakota was transported out of the state by rail, and some argue the railroads are favoring oil companies over agriculture. Bloomberg reported, as grain produced last year sits in storage, waiting for trains to carry it to market, the bottlenecks may get worse as an anticipated record grain harvest begins, officials warned. John Hoeven, the Republican Senator from North Dakota, said at the hearing, “the bottom line is that we need greater rail capacity to meet the growing needs of […]

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Energy company Enterprise Products Partners said it’s vetting interest in a pipeline that would service North Dakota and Colorado shale oil basins. Dubbed the Bakken-to-Cushing pipeline, Enterprise said it was opening a vetting period to determine demand for capacity for a line that could carry an initial 340,000 barrels per day and expand to 700,000 bpd. The pipeline would extend about 1,200 miles and service the Bakken shale area in North Dakota, as well as the Powder River and Denver-Julesburg basins in Colorado . "This pipeline offers a reliable, safe, and economical solution that promotes continued development of some of our nation’s most prolific producing areas and reduces the need for imports of crude oil," A.J. Teague, executive vice president and chief operating officer at Enterprise, said in a statement. The United States is producing more oil than the existing network of pipelines can handle. Industry officials said transporting […]

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Officials from North Dakota and other upper Midwestern states today urged U.S. regulators to pressure railroads to fix the logjams that are blocking grain shipments as harvest season approaches. Congestion on the rail lines operated by Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. (CP) and Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s (BRK/A) BNSF railroad, caused by a harsh winter and growing demand for railcars to accommodate North Dakota’s oil boom, is already costing farmers millions of dollars, U.S. Senator John Hoeven, a Republican, told the Surface Transportation Board at a Fargo, North Dakota, hearing. As grain produced last year sits in storage, waiting for trains to carry the crops to market, the bottlenecks may get worse without immediate steps as an anticipated record grain harvest begins, officials warned. “There’s great apprehension in how things will go this fall,” said Governor Jack Dalrymple, a Republican, said. The board ordered the rail lines in June to provide […]

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