(HELENA) The State of Montana will offer detailed training on a range of topics that includes air quality and discharge permitting, compliance requirements, and best business practices for contractors, opencut mining, materials processors, and the oil and gas industry.

The trainings will be in Sidney on October 1 – 3 at the Mondak Heritage Center, 120 3rd Ave SE,  and will be conducted by representatives of the Departments of Environmental Quality (DEQ) and Transportation (MDT). The trainings are free of charge and open to qualified registrants.

The three-day series is designed specifically to address practices surrounding opencut mining and associated development and growth seen in recent years throughout northeastern Montana.

“This training series provides valuable information that will save owner-operators and contractors time and money as they grow with the region,” said Darrick Turner, manager of DEQ’s Small Business Environmental Assistance Program. “Attendees will come away with a better understanding of the state’s environmental regulations and the permitting processes.”

Topics will include air quality and discharge permitting, and inspections. A full day is devoted to siting and compliance requirements and permitting for opencut operations. Enforcement and transportation issues will also be addressed.

Registration is available by calling 800-433-8773 or by emailing Darrick Turner at: dturner2@mt.gov.

By Lynn Helms – NDIC Department of Mineral Resources

• May Oil: 19,839,420 barrels = 639,277 barrels/day
• Jun Oil: 19,809,662 barrels = 660,332 barrels/day (preliminary) > NEW all-time high
• May Gas:  21,360,912 MCF = 689,062 MCF/day
• Jun Gas: 21,381,942 MCF = 712,7312 MCF/day (preliminary) > NEW all-time high
• May Producing Wells = 7,205
• Jun Producing Wells = 7,352 (preliminary) > NEW all-time high

May Permitting: 180 drilling and 2 seismic
Jun Permitting: 204 drilling and 0 seismic (all time high was 245 in Nov 2010)
May   Sweet Crude Price = $79.44/barrel
Jun   Sweet Crude Price = $72.58/barrel

Today Sweet Crude Price = $80.00/barrel ND (all-time high was $136.29 July 3, 2008)

• May rig count 211
• June rig count 213
• July rig count 211

Today’s rig count is 203 (all-time high was 218 on May 29, 2012)

Comments:

Great weather and additional crews resulted in increased hydraulic fracturing activity and increased production. Rig count has now decreased slightly to around 200-205 and rig efficiency continues to improve with the spud to TD time now averaging 20 days.  Daily production increased 3.3% from May to June. Over 95% of drilling still targets the Bakken and Three Forks formations. The idle well count stayed about the same indicating an estimated 347 wells waiting on fracturing services. This is expected to lead to significant production increases through the summer as additional fracturing crews are added.

Crude oil take away via pipeline is now less than 50% of daily production, but rail and truck transportation are adequate to keep up with near term production projections. The North Dakota Sweet posted price basis is now -14% to NYMEX-WTI and NYMEX-WTI basis is now -18% to Brent.  This is resulting in an increasing amount of North Dakota crude oil transported on rail so it can reach destinations that pay Brent price.

Mail: U.S. Department of the Interior, Director (630), Bureau of Land Management, Mail Stop 2134 LM, 1849 C St. NW., Washington, DC 20240, Attention: 1004-AE26.
Fax: Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Desk Officer for the Department of the Interior, fax 202-395- 5806.

There are a significant number of concerns with the rule as proposed, but the major points that should be commented on are as follows:

1)  This is a state’s rights issue.  States that have adopted hydraulic fracturing rules that include chemical disclosure, well construction, and well bore pressure testing should be exempted from the rule.

2)  The EPA study of potential hydraulic fracturing effects on ground water is not finished and there are currently no known environmental contamination incidents.

3)  As Chairman Hall has testified, the required consultation with the Three Affiliated Tribes has not occurred.

Draft EPA Guidance for permitting hydraulic fracturing using diesel fuel has been published.  The comment period has been extended to 5pm EDT on August 23, 2012.  I urge all of our readers to submit comments to the EPA as follows:

Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OW-2011-1013 by one of the following methods: www.regulations.gov: Follow the on-line instructions for submitting comments. Email:OWDocket@epa.gov@epa.gov
Mail: Permitting Guidance for Oil and Gas Hydraulic Fracturing Activities Using Diesel Fuels—Draft, Environmental Protection Agency, Mailcode: 4606M, 1200 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20460.

There are a significant number of concerns with the guidance as proposed, but the major points that should be commented on are as follows:

1)  This is a state’s rights issue.  States that have adopted hydraulic fracturing rules that include chemical disclosure, well construction, and well bore pressure testing should be explicitly exempted from the guidance.

2)  The definition of diesel fuel is too broad because it includes six CASRNs as well as any materials referred to by one of these primary names or any associated common synonyms.

3)  EPA made no attempt to identify dangerous concentrations of these materials.

Hydraulic fracturing treatments that utilize concentrations of less than 10% of any material defined as diesel fuel should be exempt from permitting requirements.

4)  The guidance is written for Enhanced Oil Recovery wells or disposal wells completed with tubing and packer.  It shows a serious lack of understanding of the horizontal drilling-hydraulic fracturing process.  Most of the requirements will not work mechanically on wells completed with swell packers and fractured down the production casing.

“Director’s Cut.” By Lynn Helms – NDIC Department of Mineral Resources (2012-8-15). Retrieved 9-5-2012.

 

Crude oil production in the Bakken rose almost 5 percent from April’s output. The number of producing oil wells went up more than 3 percent. There are almost 7,000 producing oil wells in western North Dakota, which is almost twice as many wells as it had five years ago, and crude oil production has increased five fold.

Meanwhile a dispute between Canadian pipeline Enbridge Energy LP and Saddle Butte Pipeline is brewing into what could become a political showdown between the two countries over whether Bakken oil production will be squeezed out by Canadian oil sands crude oil flowing from across the northern border.

The subsidiary of Saddle Butte – High Prairie Pipelines LLC is accusing Enbridge of denying its request to directly link a proposed 450-mile pipeline from the booming Bakken oil fields in North Dakota and Eastern Montana to a highway of pipelines currently feeding crude oil to Midwest East Coast refineries.

Saddle Butte is attempting to connect its High Prairie Pipeline to Enbridge at Clearbrook, MN. However, Enbridge Energy has so far refused to allow a pipeline interconnection by High Prairie Pipeline at its facility in Clearbrook, MN.

Even though oil prices have been falling, North Dakota’s crude oil production has been continuing to increase. The ND Department of Mineral Resources reported oil producers pumped an average of 639,000 barrels of oil each day in May 2012 or almost 20 million barrels of crude oil for the month.

Currently most the Bakken crude oil is being hauled to refineries and the Cushing, OK hub by rail car. The Keystone XL (KXL) pipeline is about two years away from being completed from Alberta, Canada to Cushing, OK. The permit for construction and operating the southern leg of the KXL from Cushing to the Gulf Coast has now been approved by the state agencies involved and is expected to be completed by the end of 2013.

Bob van der Valk is a petroleum industry analyst working and living in Terry, Montana. He can be contacted at (406) 853-4251 or e-mail: tridemoil@aol.com

His viewpoints about the petroleum industry are posted on his web page at: http://www.4vqp.com/pages/12/index.htm

Some data in the above article was obtained from E & E Publishing as well as Oil Price Information Service (OPIS) at www.opisnet.com

Photo courtesy of Travis W. Cooksey

Congratulations to the Bakken Oil Business Journal’s Advertising team member Larry Mosbrucker of New Salem, ND. Larry is the brains and entrepreneur of Stop Sensor, and contestant in this years Innovate ND Program. Larry garnered the Idea Champion title, and won the Value-Added Ag and Advanced Manufacturing category. North Dakotans sure know how to work, and bring a new level of entrepreneurship to business. Congratulations Larry!

Read the full article here by ND Commerce

Innovate ND Awarded Cash Prizes

Lt. Gov. Drew Wrigley and Commerce Commissioner Al Anderson announced five new Idea Champions at the sixth annual statewide Innovate ND program last night in front of a crowd of 130 people at the Ramada Plaza and Suites in Fargo. The 2012 Innovate ND Awards Ceremony was hosted by the ND Department of Commerce and the Fargo Moorhead West Fargo Chamber.

A panel of 10 private sector judges made the final selections out of a field of 20 finalists on Tuesday afternoon before announcing the five winning teams that each received $15,000 in cash and a valuable package of in-kind professional services to help them launch and grow their business. Cash prizes were made possible by the generosity of private sector business.

“Innovate ND is an exciting program that highlights hardworking innovators of North Dakota’s first-in-the-nation economy,” Lt. Gov. Wrigley said. “Our economic future is in the hands of creative, problem-solving individuals with a promising idea and the commitment to building their business right here in North Dakota.”

The five winning entries, unranked, are:

• Equinox Analytics, Bismarck, ND
• StopSensor, New Salem, ND
• Theratainment, Fargo, ND
• Webcast America, West Fargo, ND
• Zoovio, Mandan, ND

The winners of the category awards and the winner of the People’s Choice Award were also named.

The winner of the People’s Choice Award went to Gimme Hockey. This is an idea a website for players and hockey camp organizers for promotion, selection, registration, payment, and review. An online database gives prospective customers the ability to sort camps based on the following criteria: skill level, gender, age, date, location, price, and/or name. More than 2,000 total votes were cast. For the fourth year, the $500 cash award was sponsored by the North Dakota Chamber of Commerce.

Category winners each received $500 each provided by industry sponsors. The winners in each of the five categories are:
Value-Added Ag and Advanced Manufacturing – StopSensor, New Salem, ND
Energy and Technology Based – Solargy Lights, Neche and Grand Forks, ND
Retail-Based – Bag’Em Outdoors, Hankinson, ND
Youth Entrepreneurship – Video Promoting ND, Argusville, ND
Women/Minorities/Rural Entrepreneurship – Collapsible Urine Hat, Bismarck, ND

“Our goal with Innovate ND is to help entrepreneurs turn business ideas into functional businesses,” Anderson said. “To date, nearly 800 people with 400 ideas have participated in the program and 125 new businesses are operational or in the development stage as a result.”

Partners from across the state provided technical assistance to 74 teams and 160 participants in the competition this year.

All finalists completed an extensive written summary and made an oral presentation in front of the panel of judges. In selecting winners, judges looked at five criteria: innovation, commercial viability, investment opportunity, entrepreneur team and quality of presentation. The People’s Choice Award was determined by online voting and the category winners were determined by the sponsor of the category.

Innovate ND was launched in November 2006 by the governor and was coordinated by the Governor’s Office, the North Dakota Department of Commerce, the UND Center for Innovation, and the NDSU Technology & Research Park. Forum Communications was the lead sponsor for Innovate ND. Participants paid $250 to enroll in the program.

The program was made possible by more than $200,000 in private-sector contributions and in-kind professional services donations as well as appropriated funds from the Department of Commerce. For more information, see www.innovatend.com.