[Phil]

I just spent a week up in North Dakota visiting the Bakken region.

Some amazing stuff happening up there. Quite a contrast from California.

[luke warm]

nothing calif couldn't do... just drill baby drill

[kenberg]

Phil, on 2012-June-12, 14:44, said:

I just spent a week up in North Dakota visiting the Bakken region.

Some amazing stuff happening up there. Quite a contrast from California.

Fargo is the new LA.
Actually I wish them the very best but even for a Minnesota boy it's too cold up there.

[Phil]

kenberg, on 2012-June-13, 17:41, said:

Fargo is the new LA.
Actually I wish them the very best but even for a Minnesota boy it's too cold up there.

Dontcha know??

Fargo and Bismarck pushed to repeal property taxes today, since the State is getting rich off the oil extraction tax.

Even in a state as conservative as ND, it failed 3:1. Gotta pay for the roads getting chewed up somehow.

[mike777]

property taxes usually pay for the schools as well as local roads.

dont really have an issue with taxing all those new rich property owners to play for local stuff such as local schools, local roads for all the newbies moving in.



rather they repeal state income tax if they got one.

--


speaking of calif, my neighbors just moved back to their 1800 sq ft track home with tiny yard and no view that is worth about 1M bucks in redwood city area. home prices are still just nutty there. They had a 4000sq ft house with huge wooded yard here that cost a fraction of that. She works for VISA and got a nice new promotion and told us no one wanted to leave and move back to calif except her since she had a home there and family in calif.

btw2 Gold Rush sounds like a great Neil Young title.

[mike777]

kenberg, on 2012-June-13, 17:41, said:

Fargo is the new LA.
Actually I wish them the very best but even for a Minnesota boy it's too cold up there.

Global warming may help.

[Winstonm]

kenberg, on 2012-June-13, 17:41, said:

Fargo is the new LA.

Fargo or LA Confidential?

[kenberg]

mike777, on 2012-June-13, 17:55, said:

property taxes usually pay for the schools as well as local roads.

ND seems to do ok with their schools.
Some fun but useless data:
I googled NAEP and checked the eighth grade math score.
http://nces.ed.gov/n...cwithin%2c0%2c0
They get 292 against a national average of 283. Of course I note that Minnesota scored 295. All the children are above average.

ND beat us in warm weather though.
http://www.infopleas...a/A0001416.html
Record high for ND is 121, for MN it is a mere 114. CA blows us away with 134.
MN and ND both have -60 for their lowest score.

Just think, if you did not read the bbo forum you never would have learned this.

[jdeegan]

At Bakken they are fracking for oil for the first time that I know about. Fracking for gas has been going on for 5+ years on a fairly large scale, mostly in the U.S. The consequences from this new technology both the U.S. and the world are going to be quite substantial. OPEC will be tamed, and oil and gas prices should be moderate at worst. We may have to re-engineer our cars to get 60 mpg, but it will be because of global warming, not because the world is running out of oil.

[Phil]

jdeegan, on 2012-June-19, 23:10, said:

At Bakken they are fracking for oil for the first time that I know about. Fracking for gas has been going on for 5+ years on a fairly large scale, mostly in the U.S. The consequences from this new technology both the U.S. and the world are going to be quite substantial. OPEC will be tamed, and oil and gas prices should be moderate at worst. We may have to re-engineer our cars to get 60 mpg, but it will be because of global warming, not because the world is running out of oil.

Fracking for oil was first tried in Eagle Ford, TX in 1997, which is another shale play. The cost and decline curves of a fracked well do not justify the production when prices are lower.

I agree this puts an interesting spin on geopolitics. Look to see Russia and China becoming BFF's again as Exxon develops the Bazhenov, which is supposedly 80x the size of Bakken.