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"MCDonalds Mcdonalds, can't you see...Seven-forty is not for me..." The chant, recited through a megaphone, was being led by a man identifed as a Christian Pastor ("Reverend Charles" we'll call him), near a McDonalds restaurant in Detroit last week. Dozens of people in the parking lot uttered the chant with him, as the crowd sought to malign McDonalds restaurants while at the same time demanding a $15.00 per hour wage. "They want fifteen, they want a union, they want to be organized" Pastor Charles told the tv news crews. "The McDonalds corporation should allow that to happen immediately." The illogic...

From his driveway, Tom Wheeler's view of North Dakota's sprawling grasslands seems endless. Fields of soy, wheat and canola stretch to the horizon in all directions. But as drillers flock to the state to cash in on North Dakota's booming shale play, that horizon has become increasingly marked by natural gas flares. Flaring is the burning of natural gas that can't be processed or sold. All those flares, meanwhile, are adding up. They burn so brightly that NASA astronauts have taken pictures of their glow from space. For some landowners like Wheeler, it's not the noise or light pollution that...

A double-wide mobile-home trailer that used to serve as an elementary-school classroom is now the airport terminal. A conference room is the Hertz rental counter. And there is no baggage carousel, just a small counter where baggage workers pile luggage. Sloulin Field International Airport here wasn't built to be one of the fastest-growing airports in the world, but it is now. Traffic last year was 254% higher than just two years earlier. Airlines fly in with jets weighing twice as much as what the runway was built for. And when the parking lot is full, cars are left in ditches...

Beaver dams have so far prevented about 1 million gallons of fracking wastewater discovered spilled July 8 from a rural North Dakota pipeline from spreading too far. But area residents, environmentalists and even a Republican state legislator all want more reliable measures. The spill of the toxic saltwater, a byproduct of hydraulic fracturing, came from gas extraction operations at the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation and occurred days before it was discovered. The federal Environmental Protection Agency said the underground pipeline spilled about 24,000 barrels, or 1 million gallon, in North Dakota’s thriving oil and gas region. The water, which can...

With the release of the latest oil production data for the Bakken in North Dakota, this tight oil play reached a new record of 975,000 barrels per day in May.  This represents an increase of almost 37,000 barrels per day from the previous month, and is the largest April-May increase on record.  Daily oil per well remains stable at 127 barrels, down only slightly from the May 2013 value of 130. Overall production for North Dakota was also up in May to a new record of 1.04 million barrels per day, with daily oil per well steady at 99 barrels....

Energy companies invested hundreds of millions of dollars when they started extracting oil from shale formations in south Texas a few years ago to make the volatile crude was safer to handle, but the failure to do so at the Bakken shale is coming back to haunt the oil industry as the U.S. government seeks to prevent fiery accidents of trains containing North Dakota oil. Only one stabilizer, which can remove the most volatile gases before transport, has been built in North Dakota and it hasn't begun operation, according to a WSJ review; if the government mandates the use of...

Statoil ASA recently announced a container system to reduce flaring in the Bakken. The company’s timing could not have been better, considering that North Dakota just approved new flaring regulations. More restrictive regulations covering flaring on existing wells were passed by the North Dakota Industrial Commission – the state’s regulating entity for oil and gas – July 1. The goal of the commission is to reduce flaring to 26 percent by the fourth quarter of 2014, 23 percent by the first quarter of 2016, and 10 percent – with the potential of 5 percent – by the fourth quarter of...

North Dakota regulators tell crude oil explorers to cut the flaring of natural gas or face limits on the amount of oil they can pump from the Bakken shale formation.The state's crude output has surpassed 1M bbl/day, behind only Texas, but while Texas captures all but 1% of the natural gas produced, North Dakota burns 30% of its output as waste as the rate of production has outstripped companies' ability to capture gas through pipeline connections at the source.The North Dakota Industrial Commission is aiming for a 26% reduction in gas flaring statewide by Q4 of this year and another...

North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple is full of gratitude for pipeline infrastructure investments after tasking midstream companies two years ago to build pipelines, and build them quickly. Dalrymple hosted his second Governor’s Pipeline Summit in Bismarck on June 24, bringing together about 150 pipeline industry leaders, energy industry representatives and federal, state and local officials to share their response to the rapid construction of thousands of miles of pipelines to meet oil and gas industry demands. “There was a time a few years ago when we said we’re never going to have enough pipelines to deal with this boom,” Dalrymple...

U.S. crude production in April 2014 was 8.4 million barrels per day (bbl/d), with two states, Texas and North Dakota, accounting for nearly half of this total. Texas production topped 3.0 million bbl/d for the first time since the late 1970s, more than doubling production in the past three years, and North Dakota production broke 1.0 million bbl/d for the first time in history, nearly tripling its production over the same period, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration's Petroleum Supply Monthly report. Combined crude oil production volumes from Texas and North Dakota reached 4.0 million bbl/d. From...

North Dakota intends to nearly double its oil and gas pipeline capacity within two years as part of a plan to curb the wasteful flaring of natural gas in the bustling Bakken oil field, the state's governor said on Tuesday. Oil production in North Dakota has more than tripled in the past decade to 1 million barrels of oil equivalent (boepd) per day, making for the fastest-growing U.S. state economy. But state pipeline capacity has lagged. Governor Jack Dalrymple said the state wants to boost capacity to 1.4 million boepd by 2016 from about 780,000 boepd now. "We will reduce...

Wildlife advocates want a federal judge to order faster action on a recovery plan for imperiled Canada lynx. ... Officials also say that lynx face a relatively low degree of threat compared to other protected species. The Fish and Wildlife Service was forced to come up with a timeline on the recovery document when Molloy last month expressed frustration with the government's progress. The judge said the "stutter-step" approach by federal officials necessitated court intervention. The lawsuit pending before Molloy was brought by Friends of the Wild Swan, Rocky Mountain Wild, Biodiversity Conservation Alliance and the San Juan Citizens Alliance....

Crescent Point’s Torquay Discovery Reignites Southeast Saskatchewan. Just when you thought The Bakken couldn’t get any better—it does. Oil producers are now “cracking the code” on the Torquay, or Three Forks formation below the Bakken, and coming up with incredible economics—these wells are paying back in only seven months. This news has completely re-invigorated the Canadian side of the Bakken. And on the US side, the Three Forks is causing industry to leap-frog estimates of the amount of recoverable oil available–by about 57%! It’s hard to imagine that the #1 oil play in all of North America could have such...

North Dakota has joined the ranks of the few places in the world that produce more than a million barrels of oil per day, due in large part to the rich Bakken shale formation in the western part of the state. The April figures released Tuesday by the state’s Department of Mineral Resources showed the record tally. North Dakota had flirted with the million-barrel-per-day mark for months, but the harsh winter slowed the pace. In March, production had hit 977,000 barrels per day. North Dakota’s oil fields now represent more than 12 percent of all U.S. oil production, and more...

Remember these sixteen names when they run for office again. The sixteen Republicans who voted to proceed were Sens. Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), Kelly Ayotte (N.H.), Richard Burr (N.C.), Saxby Chambliss (Ga.), Tom Coburn (Okla.), Susan Collins (Maine). Bob Corker (Tenn.), Jeff Flake (Ariz.), Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Dean Heller (Nev.), John Hoeven (N.D.), Johnny Isakson (Ga.), Mark Kirk (Ill.), John McCain (Ariz.), Pat Toomey (Pa.) and Roger Wicker (Miss.). List courtesy The Hill.com. As reported by RedState yesterday, this bill would allow doctors to add a person’s name to the national database currently used for background checks, and list them as...

Barack Obama traveled to a Native American reservation in North Dakota, his first visit as US president to "Indian Country," where he focused Friday on education and economic development. The president, accompanied by First Lady Michelle Obama, visited the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe reservation in the central far northern state. The Sioux, which include the Lakota and Dakota nations, are the people of Sitting Bull, the chief famous for his victory over the US cavalry in the 1876 Battle of Little Bighorn. (AFP)

The energy industry was a major driver of economic growth in several of the nation’s fastest-growing states last year, including Texas and the Rocky Mountain region, according to data released Wednesday by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. The national gross domestic product, a measure of economic activity, grew 1.8 percent in 2013. Meanwhile, several states with thriving oil and natural gas industries, including North Dakota and Texas, saw economic growth of more than 3.5 percent. Still, the industry couldn’t save some states from lackluster economic results. In the heart of the Marcellus Shale — a major natural gas production...

The Mount Vernon Assembly – Indianapolis FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Skip Brown skip.brown@iga.in.gov 317-232-9521 The Mount Vernon Assembly to Meet at Indiana Statehouse June 12 and 13 INDIANAPOLIS (June 9, 2014) – More than 100 state legislators representing 33 states will meet at the Indiana Statehouse in Indianapolis on June 12 and 13 to continue establishing the rules and procedures needed for a future state-led convention for proposing amendments to the U.S. Constitution, as authorized by Article V of the Constitution. The meeting is a continuation of efforts that began in December 2013 at George Washington’s historic Mount Vernon estate...

Please take the time to read this short story and help me if you can. My son Levi was killed in a drunk driving accident in North Dakota in October of 2012. He was packing his trailer to return home to eastern Washington the next day he was to be married in November to his High school sweetheart, and we had began the process of clearing ground to build their home. A fellow employee stopped by and picked up Levi and Patrick who was helping Levi. Shortly after leaving Patrick said Levi told Andrew (the driver) to stop the car...