Crude-by-rail bill passes Washington House but with big change

The state of Washington’s legislature has been contemplating a bill that would require all oil delivered to the state’s refineries to be shipped with a vapor pressure below 9 psi. It’s a big deal for North Dakota oil producers because a lot of our oil goes west, and we don’t require vapor pressure to be

Read & Share   sourced from: S&P Global

MSU student life and contributions and entrepreneurship and innovation in the energy sector

GoodTalk Minot is a weekly collaboration between myself and Jonah Lantto of The Good Talk Network. Our focus: Minot and the people that make it interesting and keep it moving. This past week’s conversations featured the President of Minot State Student Government, Aaron Richard, and one of the founders of the region’s fastest-growing energy sector

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The Case for Small Commercial Spaces

What type of land development fosters an entrepreneurial ecosystem? If we think in terms of the biological ecosystem, we don’t have sustainability unless there are species at every level of the food chain. That metaphor speaks to a start-small mentality; this commentary from Strong Towns does also.

Read & Share   sourced from: Strong Towns

Twin cities construction firms band with developers, schools to attract more workers

Construction is booming in the twin cities, but there’s still a problem — they don’t have enough workers. The solution? Right now it’s a program to attract more students into the construction trades. Stories of worker shortages are becoming more commonplace on TheMinotVoice as they reflect a situation we have to address locally.

Read & Share   sourced from: Star Tribune

The economy keeps adding jobs, but filling them gets harder

Jobs, jobs, jobs — they aren’t hard to find. The tricky part is for the businesses that need qualified people to fill them. NPR has the story on the national trend, but there’s a message we’d do well to take note of here in Minot. We perpetually pursue jobs through economic development, but we already

Read & Share   sourced from: NPR

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County to try oil field brine for road dust control

An age-old problem in gravel-road country in getting a new take on an old solution. Dealing with dust and maintaining country roads — especially those traveled heavily during temporary uses like mining gravel — is an ongoing challenge. To address it, the County will be applying a brine solution byproduct from a local oil well

Read & Share   sourced from: Minot Daily News

With focus on Bakken, Hess sells out of Utica Play

A major player in the Bakken oil field and a major employer in Minot is divesting their holdings in other oil fields to focus more heavily on the Bakken. Hess has sold their holdings in the Utica Shale for $400 million.

Read & Share   sourced from: Bakken Magazine

Minnesota power company looks to study big battery concept in South Dakota

One of the downsides of wind energy is there are times when it produces power that it isn’t demanded. That creates a storage problem. A Minnesota-based power company is looking to store that energy by pumping Missouri River water uphill where it can later be released for hydro-electric power generation. The Fargo Forum has the story

Read & Share   sourced from: InForum

Trade tariffs weigh heavy on big beer bottom lines

When tariffs on aluminum get tossed around as negotiating chips, America’s big beer makers get nervous. When you sell a lot of beer in aluminum cans, even a little tariff can have a big impact. Joe Deaux writing for Bloomberg has the story on the trade-offs that may result from fighting a trade war. It’s

Read & Share   sourced from: Bloomberg

New film urges action to protect Badlands from oil impacts

Teddy Roosevelt came to the North Dakota Badlands more than a 130 years ago, and the spirit of conservation was one of the ideals he took back to the East Coast and ultimately, the Presidency. And according to one group of North Dakota citizens, that same call to conservation is needed again in our state’s oil

Read & Share   sourced from: Bismarck Tribune

Mining the magic: MN Industry leftovers reinvented by influx of silent sports

How do you take a once scarred landscape filled abandoned ore mines and turn it into something positive? One method: by embracing silent sports like mountain biking, hiking, trout fishing, and kayaking. A two-hour drive from the twin cities, you’ll find the Cayuna State Recreation Area, home to a then-radical idea hatched 30-years ago that is

Read & Share   sourced from: Star Tribune

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The cult of productivity has a counterproductive flaw

Imagine you figure out a new way to do something at work, saving you five hours each week. Over a year, you’ll save 260 hours. Now suppose you spent 10 hours teaching this work hack to 10 of your colleagues. At the end of the year, your productivity would be 4% lower (you’d only save

Read & Share   sourced from: Quartz

Who’s Going to Capitalize on the North Dakota/NAFTA Talking Point?

In November of 2017, two studies were made public regarding the effect of NAFTA (The North American Free Trade Agreement) were it to be repealed. One study was done by BMO Capital Markets and the other by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The third most vulnerable state were NAFTA to be repealed would be North

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Paying people to move to rural locations

The efforts to reenergize and repopulate rural portions of the United States are an ongoing topic for politicians. Often framed under the idea of ‘economic development’, the hope is that government can incentivize a behavior deemed to be beneficial to an area that’s not taking place on it’s own through the private sector. In Georgia,

Read & Share   sourced from: Politically Georgia

This is what job creation looks like!

For the past 25-years, I've watched our economic development efforts swing for the fences. We've spent millions and millions incentivizing and luring the big fish. There are some legitimate success stories. There are also some spectacular failures.

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Welcome to Washington… er … La-La Land

This month has been what looks like a reality check. Let’s stipulate to a few facts. In Washington, D.C. we have a Republican President, a Republican House of Representatives and a Republican Senate. In the opinion of these duly elected persons, a tax decrease is needed to stimulate the economy. This is at a time

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