A Mysterious Patch Of Light Shows Up In The North Dakota Dark
I seem to be one of the few persons commenting so far who actually lives in the region and regularly reads local reporting on issues in North Dakota (a state neighboring my state). Western North Dakota, where the Bakken Shale oil boom is occurring, is very sparsely populated and historically had minimal infrastructure. It takes TIME to build pipelines to move the natural gas brought up by oil drilling operations to natural gas customers. Pipeline proposals are currently in regulatory review. There isn't even pipeline infrastructure in place yet for all of the petroleum production in North Dakota--much of the oil produced there is brought to broader markets in tanker trucks, and the truck traffic volumes are putting a lot of stress on highway roadbeds until the highways can be upgraded.<p>Right now there is a boom economy in western North Dakota, with extremely high wages, low unemployment, a shortage of single women,<p><a href="http://www.twincities.com/national/ci_22382285/north-dakota-oil-boom-unsettles-gender-balance-some" rel="nofollow">http://www.twincities.com/national/ci_22382285/north-dakota-...</a><p>and established businesses in the region importing workers from as far away as Illinois just to keep up normal operations as workers quit to join oil field crews. There hasn't been time to build infrastructure yet to move away the natural gas to markets that will pay for the gas--especially because the price of natural gas all over the United States has crashed because of the huge increase in production in the last few years. But given time, yes, there will be infrastructure in place to transport Bakken Shale gas to other markets, and I'm sure that we here in Minnesota will be as glad to have North Dakotan natural gas to supplement our nuclear-powered energy grid as we already are to have North Dakotan petroleum brought in by truck. Once more pipelines are built, the entire United States energy economy will become more flexible.<p>Still to be figured out is the economics of converting natural gas deliquefaction terminals (those cost BILLIONS of dollars and years to build or convert) along the Gulf Coast into liquefaction terminals, so that the United States can get into the business of exporting liquified natural gas. It could happen. North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula used to flare off all of their natural gas incidentally brought up during petroleum production--there was no local market for it. It took a long time to develop natural gas liquefaction; now there is international trade in natural gas that was undreamed of when I was growing up.