Dan Joling of the AP reports Alaska officials are Thrilled with Cook Inlet Lease Sale.  Could this be light at the end of a slow-development tunnel–or a sign that producers now believe the Regulatory Commission of Alaska will not unreasonably disapprove gas sales agreements to utilities as it did in 2006-7?  -dh

Help Alaska Continue To Produce Energy For the Country While Invigorating the National Economy!

Notes From the Road, Day 1: Bismarck to Williston

by

Dave Harbour

Yesterday, I was visiting oil industry folks in Bismarck, and today am in Williston after spending the night in a motel conference room on a roll-away bed.  

I was grateful for that bed, too, having driven and photographed for about 10 hours on Wednesday.  By the time I drove into dusty, Fairbanks-like Williston, every single motel front desk manager said the same thing, "Sorry, we’re out of rooms.  What with 11,000 flood refugees from Minot and the oil field workers, we’re streached."  Then, I pleaded with the last one to rent me a chair to sleep in.  She took pity and for $75 gave me a huge conference room and a cot…with shower facilities in the pool room next door.  Late last night, I went over to a Mexican restaurant for a steak and walleye fish combo.  Strange but great!

The whole experience so far reminds me of Alaska in the 1970s (or, Inuvik {minus gas pipeline} or the oil sands areas of Alberta) more recently.  We were building everything…from our exploration, production and pipeline facilities to our cities and roads,  State Capital Bismarck reminds me of Anchorage, then, while Wiliston in the westernmost side of the state, is a lot like a mixture of 1970-80 era Fairbanks with Prudhoe Bay thrown in.  

Unlike the massive, North Slope sized living and operational buildings, the production occurs on small tracts of private farmland, mostly.  Everything is pretty much neat as a pin in the production areas with storage tanks, a pump, a port-a-potty and other support activities.  Most of the production facilities are un-manned.  Thousands of trucks are everywhere…transporting drilling materials and production pad gravel to the drill sites, hauling oil from them, carrying people everywhere.  Pipe is everywhere, too, along with the surveying of farmland, erecting new high voltage transmission lines, and many ‘help wanted’ signs. 

So it’s now a new morning in Williston, N.D.– where the new action is in oil and gas exploration and development.  Folks seem more concerned with building than taking from others (The difference between self-confidence and self-consciousness).  1.5% unemployment.  Most everyone is working.  People using cell phones are paying for them themselves.  I’m collecting many photos and memories of how America/Alaska used to be.  Somewhat nostalgic.  Talked to two fellas today from Texas with oill and gas support company operations here in North Dakota and in Alaska.  "Only reason we’re still in Alaska is maintenance on pipes and old facilities.  We’re thinking of layoffs now.  Here…oh, it’s amazing."  

While it’s whimsical coming here this week — thinking of how Alaska used to be — neither I nor anyone I know would want Alaska to actually be that way now.  We like, in general, the maturing of society.  But with that maturity has come the loss of teen-aged fire-in-the-belly.  Somewhere there should be a balance.  I think the balance may be building a nice place to live without stiffling the free enterprise spirit that build it. And, that means ‘pushing back’ on control extremists who want to shut off all commerce and on government professionals that daily construct new techniques for controlling what we do, where we can go, what we can say, how we work and play and ….  

…there is a balance somewhere.  It is our generations’ challenge to find that balance.

Now…to catch more early morning photos of rigs and the people who work them….

And, by the way, here folks think that about 12% combined state taxes on oil are too high.  More later….  dh