massive load of fracking

Published October 14, 2012, 12:00 AM

Clay under Stark, Dunn counties a boon: Study reveals massive load of fracking material

Could a certain type of clay prominent in western North Dakota make the hydraulic fracturing process easier for energy companies while simultaneously providing even more of an economic boost to the Oil Patch?

By: Bryan Horwath, The Dickinson Press

• Material

This material, pictured next to a penny to show its size, is a proppant used in the hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, process that has allowed oil drillers to retrieve oil stuck deep within the Bakken. A large mass of clay material that’s good for use as a proppant has been located in Stark and Dunn counties.

 Talk about it

Could a certain type of clay prominent in western North Dakota make the hydraulic fracturing process easier for energy companies while simultaneously providing even more of an economic boost to the Oil Patch?
The foremost geologist in the state thinks both scenarios could become reality.
“We’ve estimated that there are 1.7 billion tons of economically mineable kaolin in western North Dakota,” said state geologist Edward Murphy. “This is something that could potentially be a boon for energy companies and for the state of North Dakota.”
After some extensive study by the North Dakota Geological Survey and North Dakota State University, two things are clear: the state has plenty of clay and most of it is buried in Stark County and Dunn County.
Commonly referred to as kaolin, these rock-like clay formations are full of kaolinite, a stable mineral that tends to be high in aluminum oxide content.
Common ingredients used in the fracking process are proppants — substances used to prop open cracks in the shale formation to allow oil to seep out — and can come in the form of sand-based mixtures and ceramic beads.
Much of the ceramic proppant materials currently used in the fracking process in the Bakken come from as far away as China, but that could soon change, Murphy said.
“On average, a Bakken well uses 3 (million) to 5 million pounds of proppant,” Murphy said. “In 2012, companies will drill and complete around 2,400 oil wells in North Dakota and use roughly 5 million tons of proppant. A big cost of drilling a Bakken or Three Forks well is tied directly to proppants.”
The GS has mapped two major deposits of this special type of clay: the Bear Den portion of the Golden Valley Formation, mostly in Dunn County, and the Rhame Bed of the Slope Formation, which is located primarily in the western half of Stark County.
A total of 232 rock samples were submitted to the Center for Nanoscale Science and Engineering at NDSU with a final report due in late 2012 or early next year, according to the GS website.
When contacted Thursday, representatives from energy contracting giants Halliburton and Baker Hughes — both of which are active in the Bakken — said they couldn’t enter into specifics about the potential for the mining of North Dakota kaolin.
“Our global supply chain acquires many commodities around the world on a daily basis,” said Baker Hughes spokesperson Pam Easton. “Based on this activity level, and for competitive reasons, we are not able to discuss just one ingredient or source for a particular commodity.”
Murphy said the decision on the use of a sand and chemical mixture or the use ceramic beads as proppant in the fracking process comes down to whichever a particular company prefers. A move to proppant which would be mined near the Bakken, however, could significantly cut down on shipping costs and efforts to bring sand in, often from places like Wisconsin.
“We’ve kind of done phase I of the process already,” Murphy said. “It’s now going to be a matter of companies and the state looking into the potential of mining these minerals. We could see that process move along in the next couple of years.”

Tags: stark county, dunn county, hydraulic fracturing, news, oil, clay, proppant, fracking, drilling

Gubernatorial campaign for the badlands

Taylor brings gubernatorial campaign to Dickinson

During a campaign stop in Dickinson on Wednesday, gubernatorial candidate Sen. Ryan Taylor, D-Towner, promoted the preservation of 40,000-plus acres of Badlands as wilderness, essentially keeping oil development off the land.

By: Katherine Grandstrand, The Dickinson Press

• Taylor

Sen. Ryan Taylor, D-Towner, speaks to supporters at the Dickinson Public Library on Wednesday morning at a stop for his gubernatorial campaign. Before Dickinson, he had been in New Town, and after he was headed to Bowman and Regent.

During a campaign stop in Dickinson on Wednesday, gubernatorial candidate Sen. Ryan Taylor, D-Towner, promoted the preservation of 40,000-plus acres of Badlands as wilderness, essentially keeping oil development off the land.
“It just means that there’s going to be 40,000 acres, possibly, that would remind us of what this place looked like before all this occurred,” he said at the Dickinson Public Library.
The Bakken, which extends into Canada and eastern Montana, is an area of 9.6 million acres in North Dakota. The proposed wilderness area, when combined with the acreage of the protected lands of Theodore Roosevelt National Park (just more than 70,000 acres in three units), is 1.1 percent of the North Dakota Bakken.
“We’re still going to get a tremendous amount of oil out of North Dakota,” said Taylor, the Democrat challenger to Gov. Jack Dalrymple. “We’re still supportive of that and have been in a number of our policies.”
The wilderness area would also give a buffer to the park, helping to preserve the soundscape and views of the 16th smallest national park, said Wade Schafer, Dacotah Chapter of the Sierra Club conservation organizer.
“It just makes sense to set aside just a real small percentage of that land and try and keep it the way it was when Theodore Roosevelt was here,” he said.
Hunting and grazing is not allowed in the park, but would be in a wilderness area. According to the Wilderness Act of 1964, development, including the oil industry, is not permitted on designated wilderness lands.
“There’s a lot of people that will come out and like to hunt in the Badlands, but we also got to make sure that they have something to shoot at too,” Taylor said.
The wilderness area will provide extra space to recreate, Schafer said.
“Oil development and recreation are mutually exclusive,” he said. “No one wants to go recreate in an oil field.”
The decision is up to federal government to turn the land into wilderness, but if it should do so, the state would evaluate and try to work with it, said Amanda Godfread, communications director for Dalrymple for Governor.
“It’s really in their hands entirely,” she said of the U.S. Forest Service.
The governor, who hunts pheasant in western North Dakota, is focused on making sure there’s balance between conservation and development, Godfread said.
“Just making sure that we don’t really skew the balance is the most important thing in his perspective,” she said.
There is already some oil development visible and audible in the park, especially the Elkhorn Ranch Unit, Friends of TRNP President David Nix said.
FTRNP supports creating that buffer between the developed land and protected lands of the park, he said.
“Let’s keep a little bit — let’s just keep a little bit for the people of North Dakota,” Taylor said.

Tags: ryan taylor, jack dalrymple, oil, news, democrat, republican, election

Beach ND Pumpkin Festival 2012

The Beach Pumpkin Festival did have a few big pumpkins but was not big fun. A kid oriented event there were long stretches of time with minimal activities to keep adults entertained. We showed up about an hour after its posted start time and the food had sold out. We looked at the interesting pumpkin art (see below) and got an opportunity to wander in the prairie fire pottery gallery as well as see the pumpkin based goods that were for the contest, The street flooding and pumpkin races did not start for two more hours and we did not think we had it in us to sit in the cold air and wait. Thus we drove the town, its quaint and cute in the small town style and had lunch at one of the nicer subways I have ever been to. Sadly La Playa and the Sip and Sew were closed (since it was Sunday). I hope you enjoy the pictures they are the best in the Festival!

Studio Audience 

Hollywood Squares

Pumpkin Jeopardy

Alex Tribek 

Red and Blue M&M

Jack - King of Halloween 

Camels Hump Lake, North Dakota

 Along interstate 94 between Medora and Beach you see a sign for Camels Hump Lake, in close secession you past a pond by the side of the interstate. If you exit rather than pass it bye the pond grows larger, still a stretch as a lake, it is in fact a dammed up river. Camels Hump lake has several neglected picnic tables that would be an ideal spot for a picnic if the timing was so. We visited on a Sunday afternoon and it was calm with only a few fishers sharing the lake with us. Lots of space to move around, explore and skip rocks.

Camels Hump Lake

Camels Hump Lake

Camels Hump Lake

Camels Hump Lake

Skipping Rocks

Camels Hump Lake From the Framers Hill

Camels Hump Lake Farmers Hill

Just across from the public entrance another perhaps even more interesting oddity lays a farmers metal graveyard, completed with a hill of old soda cans and numerous tractor and machinery parts

Century Training Week 6

Week 6 of training and these entries are becoming popular, so popular in fact that Google Ads thought I should advertise for bikes in my blog =). This week was close to a failure for century training, WE had a huge weather shift and my motivation hit rock bottom. So here it the weeks re-cap

Trek Wahoo

Monday: Cross training 1 mile walk
Tuesday: Nothing
Wednesday: Snow!
Thursday: Cross training 1 mile walk
Friday: Nothing
Saturday: Cross training 5 mile walk
Sunday: Cross training 1.5 mile walk


This is the Bike that I have been using over the past month, the Trek Wahoo, and at the end of this post are a whole bunch of bikes that Google ads is affiliated with if you want to do a bit of bike shopping =)

enjoy!

A win for History in ND

Roosevelt's ranch on nat'l historic register

The U.S. Forest Service announced Thursday that the Elkhorn Ranch and Greater Elkhorn Ranchlands in Theodore Roosevelt National Park have been placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

By: Bryan Horwath, The Dickinson Press

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• Trek

Visitors take a trek in Theodore Roosevelt National Park’s Elkhorn Ranch on July 14. The hike has been added to the National Register of Historic Places.

 Talk about it

The U.S. Forest Service announced Thursday that the Elkhorn Ranch and Greater Elkhorn Ranchlands in Theodore Roosevelt National Park have been placed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Serving as Theodore Roosevelt’s home for a time between 1884 and 1887 — before he was elected as the country’s 26th president — the Elkhorn Ranch consists of 216 acres of undevelopable land in the TRNP.
Referred to by the Forest Service as a “largely honorific” designation, the adding of the 4,402 acres of public and private ranchlands to the register does not provide any legal protection of development in the area, but it does put the Elkhorn Ranch in some prestigious company.
“The oil boom will inevitably encroach on the Elkhorn Ranch,” Jenkinson said. “This distinction is a move in the right direction, but with the mix of state, private and federal land, there is still a lot uncertainty as to what will happen around the ranch. Hopefully, this place and the land surrounding it will be maintained and kept just the way it is for future generations of North Dakotans and visitors from around the country and around the world.”
The head of the Forest Service also hailed the move as an important step.
“Teddy Roosevelt would be very pleased today,” said Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell in a statement. “This designation officially puts Elkhorn Ranch on the map as a destination for Americans who want to visit and learn more about one of the ‘cradles of conservation.’”
Often referred to as the “Cradle of Conservation” by environmentalists and conservation organizations, the site, about 35 miles north of Medora, becomes one of more than 4,000 historic sites on the registry, according to the release.
“This is one of the most sacred places in the history of American conservation,” said author, lecturer and Theodore Roosevelt historian Clay Jenkinson from Bismarck. “But it’s also important to remember that this designation doesn’t provide any actual protection. What it does provide is awareness of this amazing place.”
While the approximate 200 acres of land at the heart of the Elkhorn Ranchlands cannot be touched, the rest of the area — a mixture of public and private lands — has no such restrictions.
Conservationalists have been against a proposed Billings County bridge that would span the Little Missouri River between Watford City and Medora, hobby ranches in the Badlands, and the ever-expanding reach of oil and gas industry mining.
Jenkinson went on to cite the importance of ranchers, oil industry leaders and lawmakers working together to make sure certain lands in North Dakota are protected.
The process to apply for a spot on the list of historic places was started in 2007, just five years before the distinction became official, a time frame that surprised TRNP Ranger John Heiser.
“I’ll be darned,” Heiser said Thursday. “It is a shock to anyone in the conservation field. Things don’t happen very quickly on the conservation front and good news is scarce.”
The Forest Service purchased the Greater Elkhorn Ranchlands in 2007 with the support of multiple partners, including Friends of Elkhorn Ranch, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and Ducks Unlimited.

Tags: elkhorn ranch, theodore roosevelt, national register of historic places, news, oil

Century Training Week 5

Monday: 5 miles, 1.5 to work 1.5 home 3 after work and a 1.5 miles walking to the mall, Wendy's and wal-mart

Tuesday: Cross training and rest, Walked home from the mall and than ate Mexican food and sleeping.

Wednesday: 5 Miles, Trying to use today to push my muscles and time I spent this ride two gears higher than I traditionally do and made a point to keep peddling even when gravity was in my favor. I hit a few snags however and my actual time did not improve. First due to the drought the roads are very dusty and today for whatever reason the oil traffic was out in full force.For a mile + on this ride I could barley see 20 feet in front of me due to the dust clouds and breathing was a horrid experience, needless to say i slowed down significantly as I navigated this oil truck dust storm. The second snag was about 4 block from my house when avoiding construction activity I hit something and popped my tire. The result was having to walk the bike home and not sure what tomorrow will bring.

Thursday: Cross training 2.5 miles walking, With my tire still out of service and not time to repair it and get some exercise I opted to do a 2.5 mile walk. Not the same muscle group but building the legs none the less.

Friday: Cross training, 20 min of P90X yoga feeling excellent and noticing the strength in my legs is improving.


Saturday: 20 Miles, Goal 30 Miles, new tire on and 3.5 miles down the highway I get a flat again, back to the bike shop, second time this morning and with a new tire on I am trying a new route around lake Patterson  2.5 miles from my house to the Patterson lake campground, through the campground, onto the railroad access road to the traps man club on 115th. Lovely path along the south western side of the lake, up past the model airplanes club area and onto to 116th street. This bike trail was a 2006 Boy scout project that is now under management of the Dickinson parks and Recreation Department in collaboration with the badlands bike club. this first 3 miles really made me excited to be using the mountain bike as it was designed and to be off the roads and away from the oil trucks. Everything quickly went down hill the trail was gone, I was chest deep in grasses, and I had plunged a good 45 min in this till i hit a hidden log and realized i was in over my head, another 30 min of walking my bike back to the road and having to climb though a barbwire fence I was very grateful to be back on the road. Not exactly sure where I was I headed towards Dickinson Skyline and 9.2 miles latter I had made it home.

Sunday: 3 miles, cross training 1 mile walking. Walk in the morning to loosen up after yesterdays horrid trip, found a lost dog and returned it during this walk. Biked to and from work.