Posted on 09/23/2014 2:16:10 PM PDT by Ray76
The furious pace of energy exploration in North Dakota is creating a crisis for farmers whose grain shipments have been held up by a vast new movement of oil by rail, leading to millions of dollars in agricultural losses and slower production for breakfast cereal giants like General Mills.
[] reports the railroads filed with the federal government show that for the week that ended Aug. 22, the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway — North Dakota’s largest railroad, owned by the billionaire Warren E. Buffett — had a backlog of 1,336 rail cars waiting to ship grain and other products. Another railroad, Canadian Pacific, had a backlog of nearly 1,000 cars.
Farmers and agriculture groups say rail operators are clearly favoring the more lucrative transport of oil. Rail shipments of crude oil in North Dakota have surged since 2008, and the state now produces about a million barrels a day. About 60 percent of that oil travels by train from the Bakken oil fields in the western part of the state to faraway oil refiners. There are few pipelines to ship it.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Well darn..
you mean a private business is passing up the grain cars because the oil cars pay better??
who’d have thunk.
it’s capitalism.. pay more than the oil guys or get the slow boat to china treatment.
This could all be avoided if Obama would stop opposing the damned pipeline.
Warren E. Buffett, who just by coincidence is a huge Obama supporter. I wonder how he was able to convince congress that shipping oil by rail, instead of using a pipeline, was a good idea?
Crony capitalism on full display, folks.
We have to get the Grapefruit Special to New York you know, we ain’t got no time for grain
Obama gets his cut from Oil , but Grain ,the Wookiee says don’t eat it
The guy who owns the “private” railroad lobbied government to stop the pipeline. Not building the pipeline is like a huge subsidy for him.
Time for the Grand Kenyan to pick up that pen and outlaw the practice - gotta have food, you know...
cronyism is not capitalism
I think some of this is also due to the Chicago Board of trade turning into the “2nd fiat stock market” where the trades are so abstract that most of the trading is based on fantasy. If they had to take deliver of product every time they traded the system would be more “solid”....
It is like the difference between “gold stocks” and actually posessing physical gold.
While I am not against trading as a concept I think there is point where stuff gets too “abstracted out” that you have turned the commodity that they are trading into it’s own “Fantasy Fiat Currency”....
Some of the paper games could be the reason why shipping of grain is taking second fiddle to oil and the people in this country who need the grain will end up buying grain from othercountries not because it is cheaper but because it is easier to get trains comming from the ports than fromt he heatland....
Warren Buffett, much like dysentery, is the crony capitalist that keeps on giving.
[ The guy who owns the “private” railroad lobbied government to stop the pipeline. Not building the pipeline is like a huge subsidy for him. ]
And as the crops rot, replacements will be procured from china.....
This will not end well..
And we all know that Eddie Willers died in the desert...
Wouldn’t a pipeline work better? / major sarcasm
In his never-ending quest to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he doesn’t understand how the world works outside of his trust-fund/ governor’s mansion bubble, Governor Dayton this week sent a letter to federal bureaucrats complaining that railroads aren’t doing enough to transport grain and other crops from field to market.
Like the snotty third grader who sits in the front row desk by choice, Dayton acted the part of the tattle tale. “Oh! Oh! Teacher! Teacher! The railroads aren’t playing fair! Punish them!”
Now, if Dayton were something other than a totally disengaged, incompetent and liberal chief executive, he would understand both the science, the math, and the finances of the situation.
There is only so much capacity on a rail line. Therefore, when demand goes up, the capacity goes down.
More oil trains means less capacity, including less capacity for agricultural commodities.
Moreover, BNSF is a private, profit-seeking (gasp!) entity.
They operate their trains and manage their track capacity in a manner that maximizes shareholder value.
If that means giving priority to oil over grain, so be it.
Having said that, what is really galling and insulting to the intelligence of the average person (or below average person) is that the problem is, in large part, of the government’s making.
Frequent and dangerous oil trains are racing through densely populated areas because the governments of both Mark Dayton and Barry Obama have refused to grant permits for the building and expansion of pipelines that would reduce the need for oil trains.
Moreover, the government holds “right of way” legal rights over BNSF tracks to give under-utilized Northstar commuter trains priority over the same tracks.
Thus, a true problem solving elected official would work to expedite pipeline permits and either mothball or suspend Northstar in order to assist both the oil industry and the ag industry, two market sectors that are driving growth and prosperity, unlike the solar and electric car industries.
Instead, political hacks like Dayton fan the flames of emotional and irrational thought, pointing fingers at corporate bogeymen and “demanding” answers from them as to why they can’t defy physics and make more trains run on the tracks than the tracks can physically handle.
Now, some folks might see deeper politics at play. You see, a buddy of Barry Obama, Warren Buffet, owns BNSF Railway. Hence, some are tempted to say that the resistance to oil pipelines is really part of an effort to keep Buffet’s railroad in the black while strangling a competitor.
Now there could some merit to this, as Obama is truly America’s foremost Crony Capitalist president.
But the more likely scenario is that what we are seeing is really just another example of political arson.
The way this metaphorical arson works is that liberal politicians “set the fire” by passing or refusing to pass some law and then they run back to the scene, waving their arms, spraying the garden hose, and then pointing fingers at innocent parties, demanding that they prove they weren’t to blame.
Refuse to grant pipeline permits. Send letters and make statements blaming the railroads. Propose even more government to “solve” the problem.
The political arson construct can be applied to numerous other issues.
Take the tax inversion issue.
Obama and company do nothing to lower America’s high corporate tax rate. They do nothing to eliminate the double taxation of repatriated profits.
Set the house on fire.
Corporations do the rational thing. They go offshore.
Run around screaming “fire” and point fingers while you hold a gas can in one hand and a lighter in the other.
So why do they do this? The answer is simple. This model maximizes governmental power and control.
In this model, the politicians control the whole process from problem to “solution.”
The low information voter eats it up and the most business interests are too intimidated to stand up for themselves.
And this is one of the fundamental truths of liberals. They have no real interest in true public policy solutions. Instead, they only seek to concentrate power in their own hands.
http://anokacountywatchdog.com/email/2014/08.29.14_update.htm
Ma Chalmers needs them there rail cars for the soybean crop!
bump
Railroad tank cars are light years more safe and efficient than a pipeline.
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