Montana

The Bakken Shale may be booming, but Oneok Partners LP’s recent open season for the proposed Bakken Crude Express Pipeline was a bust, and the project has been scrapped, the partnership said Tuesday.

Unconventional natural gas activity supported more than one million jobs in 2010, a number that is likely to grow to nearly 1.5 million by 2015. The industry is expected to generate significant job creation, economic growth and tax revenues nationwide — in producing and non-producing states alike — according to a new report from IHS Global Insight.

MDU Resources Group Inc., which has five rigs in operation in the Bakken Shale and holds 124,000 net leasehold acres in the play, said subsidiary Bitter Creek Pipelines LLC has paid $66 million for a 50% interest in Whiting Oil and Gas Corp.’s natural gas and oil midstream assets near Belfield, ND.

Exploration and field development in the largest continuous shale oil play in the Lower 48 states, the Bakken Shale in North Dakota and Montana, will be guided by new geo-models developed with funding from the Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy (FE).

“The idle well [count] increased again to 762 wells, approximately 300 above the normal 450, indicating that drilling continues to outpace fracturing services and a need to add approximately 10 crews,” Helms said in his monthly “Director’s Cut” report.

The Western Governors’ Association (WGA) Thursday urged Congress to provide more incentives for natural gas in transportation. The two WGA heads, Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer and Idaho Gov. C.L. Butch Otter, wrote the leaders of the U.S. House and Senate to make the pitch for natural gas vehicles (NGV).

The Western Governors’ Association (WGA) Thursday urged Congress to provide more incentives for natural gas in transportation. The two WGA heads, Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer and Idaho Gov. C.L. Butch Otter, wrote the leaders of the U.S. House and Senate to make the pitch for natural gas vehicles (NGV).

The Western Governors’ Association (WGA) Thursday urged Congress to provide more incentives for natural gas in transportation. The two WGA heads, Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer and Idaho Gov. C.L. Butch Otter, wrote the leaders of the U.S. House and Senate to make the pitch for natural gas vehicles (NGV).

Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer will lead the Western Governors’ Association (WGA) in its coming fiscal year, following the conclusion of the WGA annual meeting Tuesday in Park City, UT. Idaho Gov. C. L. “Butch” Otter was elected as the new vice chairman for the group, which is leading an aggressive effort for regional climate change initiatives addressing more renewable generation and major electric transmission lines throughout the West. “Western states are at the very center of our country’s energy future, and Western governors will take the lead in building the bridge to a new energy economy,” Schweitzer said. WGA closed its three days of meetings by focusing on ways to foster more international cooperation (throughout North American and beyond) on energy and the environment. Earlier, the governors adopted a series of policy resolutions that called for “several actions to foster development of clean energy resources and reduce greenhouse gas emissions” (see Daily GPI, June 16).