One Lap

Date: 10/11/2013

Day: 15

Location: , Devils Lake, ND

Miles Today: 263

Total Miles:  3034

On the High Line; Fracking in The Wild Midwest; Seen on the Road.

On the High Line:

Yes, Devil's Lake.  The lake, which the Colonel will check out tomorrow, is a "terminal lake," which means that it has no out flow.  Accumulated sulfate, lime, magnesium and iron make it brackish.  Apparently it tastes so bad that in the early days it was bottled as medicine.

It rained hard on the High Line today; 10" in 24 hours were reported in one place according to the radio.  It was manageable, no fog and certainly no snow.  Squadrons of heavy trucks laden with the mysterious things  -- all heavy and mostly long -- needed for oil drilling and production (see below) made the drive interesting.  But these guys know what they are doing and they do it at 75 MPH.  It's that orthodontist from Duluth in the motor home reaching for his coffee who will get you.

A severe weather warning, including the slightest possibility of a tornado is in effect as the Colonel writes this, but things should clear up by morning.  It would provide conversation for a generation if the Colonel came all this way to Ozed, but the likelihood is slim.  (Did the Colonel hear someone say Alas?)

There is more green, there are a lot more trees in North Dakota than in western Montana and many more lakes.  This country too was certainly scoured by the great Pleistocene glaciers, but the soil looks better.  The area that have been disced look black like good bottom land.

(The pictures are now of adequate resolution for you to expand and look at the closely if you wish to do so.)

 

Most of this stretch of the High Line is just a bubble short of being an Interstate.  As you see, there are on and off ramps and crossings, but all cleanly done.  It is much like 101 in central California.

Fracking in the Wild Mid West

In the Bay Area We have High Tech, in the Dakotas, They have Fracking:

You probably understand "Hydraulic Fracturing" or "fracking."  Its been in the news a lot lately; just today the French, noted friends of Greenpeace, outlawed the practice in their domain.  It is a method of injecting fluid (90% water, 9.5%  sand, .5% mysterious chemicals) into certain oil and gas bearing shale deposits at very high pressure.  The pressure is applied then removed and an extraordinary quantity of hydrocarbons flow up the drill hole.  The good news: relatively low cost American sourced gas and oil -- great for the economy, bad for the mid-eastern bullies -- and lots of high paying oilfield jobs.  The bad news; more low cost American gas and oil loose in the environment and unknown effects from that shifty half percent  of chemicals in the drilling fluid, in addition to drill tailings and water that must be viewed with suspicion.

But those jobs.  North Dakota has the right sort of oil and gas bearing shale, the Bakken shale formation now produces 11% of US oil.  Accordingly, and as a result of a fracking driven petroleum industry, it also has the lowest unemployment number in the country; 3% -- which is virtually full employment and a 3.8 billion dollar budget surplus. 

There is clearly a wild west atmosphere here.  Lots and lots of well paid young men, relatively few women.  A world of steel toed boots and big pickup trucks with heavy duty brush bars and winches.  The young men do what unaccompanied young men do when they have money in their pockets.  The Colonel was warned while in Montana to watch his back in North Dakota.  ("I'm from Oakland" was the correct but unspoken response.)

Is fracking a good or a bad thing?  If any new oil well can be construed a good thing (and  an argument can be made either way,) it is not clear to the Colonel that this method of producing oil is any more noxious than any other.  This is actually not a simple question.

 

View from the High Line of a typical oil production rig.  You can see the pump on the right.  The six tanks on the left are used to store the oil before a truck comes to pick it up.  (The interstate pipe system hereabouts does not have sufficient capacity to carry all the oil produced.  It goes out of state for processing by train of truck.)

It takes lots of strong, skilled people to drill an oil well and provide the numerous support services needed to get the job done.  Where are they going to stay?  An image yesterday showed an itinerant oil workers camp, aka "man camp.".  Target Logistics provides turnkey accommodations anywhere in the world, even in North Dakota.

Lotsa pickup trucks.  Not one of these guys appears to drive an Acura.  Or a Prius.  The buildings in the back are the residence units.  It looks a lot like a jail, actually.  But there is some degree of order and security.

View of a somewhat more posh, less prison-like accommodation, this one outside of Stanley, ND.

The Colonel should have inquired about the nightly rate.



A better view of an oil production rig.  Security is somewhat lacking here; there is a Keep Out sign, but no fence and no gate.  The Colonel authorized his own entry, otherwise, I ask you, what point is there to being a Colonel 

The point of the exercise; a working pump.  Everything is immaculate, the ground is clean, there is no smell of oil, let alone spilt oil on the ground.

The Colonel did not want to irritate his unseen hosts by getting too close, but this is a flare pit; unwanted hydrocarbon gas is burnt off here.  If there is a lot of it, they build a flare pipe of appropriate height.

Oil storage tanks;  this must be a productive well.  Note again how clean everything is.  There must be nasty pump sites somewhere, but all that can be seen from the highway look like this.

Seen on the Road

Probably the best ribs in 100 miles, but very much not open

If you need to be punched, there are some establishments that you can just tell by looking will satisfy that need.  The Colonel was so sure that this is the case with Champs Fine Potables and Games of Chance that he did not have to stop to verify the fact.  This even though they serve Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. Note that the shot was taken from inside the car.  That is an armored car, not an ambulance or the police parked outside.  That is yet to come.

The Decal Guy, Always Open, to our great disappointment, was closed.  He is certainly fond of his own work.

Stanley is a nondescript North Dakota town on the High Line where the Colonel had a nondescript lunch at Joyce's.  (Cheese burger and onion rings if you care to know.)  (Yes, and a piece of pie.) (Cherry.)  And he recharged his camera batteries; Joyce's is a full service establishment.  In the Stanley park they display this really very nice bronze sculpture set.  There is a steer on the move, a cowboy on horseback in pursuit thereof, a boy bareback on a pony following him and a woman with a large stick and small girl, looking stalwart.  (The woman is stalwart, not the stick or the girl, although that stick is pretty stalwart all on  its own.)

Not a bad image of a grain elevator.  They are increasingly common along the road.




The question was asked, does Colonel Boot wear boots?  Well, yes, of course he does, although not Wellies.  It is likely not legal in this part of North Dakota to both drive a Japanese car and not wear boots of some kind.  That this well used and well beloved pair do not have steel toes is regarded hereabouts with suspicion.  These boots have been to China and Nepal and have given at least 35 years of service, so their somewhat tatty appearance should be forgiven.  And, they are extraordinarily comfortable.

Tomorrow the Colonel will, visits to Oz notwithstanding, enter Minnesota.  He is working on his accent at the present time. 

 

Wellington Boot, Col