All of the wind farms constructed in North Dakota are either owned by utilities or the power is sold to utilities, but that will change if the ND Public Service Commission approves a 200-megawatt wind farm proposed by NextEra Energy in Oliver County.

Oliver Wind IV, so named because NextEra has constructed three other wind farms in parts of Oliver County, would consist of up to 73 turbines covering a 22,000-acre area west of Center, ND. The electricity generated by the wind farm would be sold to Verizon, Inc.

In response to a question from Commissioner Julie Fedorchak during a PSC hearing in Center, NextEra representative Clay Cameron described why the company executed a contract with Verizon. Cameron said it was intended to meet Verizon's corporate anti-carbon goal.

Click here to listen to Cameron's comments.

PSC Commissioner Randy Christmann was critical of the merchant power agreement.

"They’re essentially just 'greenwashing' themselves to get environmental activists off their backs, correct?” Christmann asked Cameron, who responded that he didn't like the term "greenwashing." Christmann said it was accurate because the wind generation would displace power generated by coal-fired plants in the region.

Click here to listen to Christmann's comments.

The hearing was an opportunity for labor groups to push NextEra to hire local workers. In pre-filed testimony, Steve Cortina, marketing representative for the Laborers International Union of North America (LIUNA), said the union believes the wind industry has not put enough local people to work on construction projects, hurting the local economy.

"In 2020 there were lots of unemployed construction and oilfield workers, including our own members, but on two big wind projects, Aurora and Northern Divide, we estimated less than 10 percent of the workforce was local," Cortina said. "It was probably the worst year we have seen for local labor even though unemployment was the highest it's been for a decade."

In response to LIUNA's questioning, Cameron pledged that NextEra would encourage its engineering, procurement and construction contractors to work with the union to hire local workers.

Click here to listen to Cameron's comments.

Several area landowners also testified at the hearing. Some complained about the noise and shadow flicker produced by wind turbines, while others had praise for NextEra for offering compensation to landowners near the wind farm but who don't have a turbine on their property. 

Representatives of Basin Electric Power Cooperative were in Williston this week to explain the need for a new 345-kilovolt transmission line in Williams County that will connect Basin's Pioneer IV generation project to the grid, but one local resident questioned the need for the additional power generation.

Administrative Law Judge Timothy Dawson took testimony at a Public Service Commission hearing on the 14.6-mile line that would run from the Pioneer site to the southeast where it would connect to Basin's existing Judson substation about three miles west of Williston.

Phil Westby, Basin Electric senior electrical engineer, said the high voltage line is needed to deliver the additional 580 megawatts of Pioneer IV's gas-fired generation to the power grid. Westby said the two projects are necessary to address growing power demand and grid congestion in northwest North Dakota.

Click here to listen to Westby's comments.

Rural cooperatives in the area appeared at the hearing to support the project. Jeremy Mahowald, general manager of Upper Missouri River Power Cooperative in Sidney, MT, said the plant and the transmission line would help meet growing demand for electricity in northwestern North Dakota and northeast Montana.

Click here to listen to Mahowald's comments.

Alex Vournas, general manager of Mountrail-Williams Electric Cooperative, also appeared at the hearing in support of the line. But one local resident, Kathy Walton, questioned the need for the project. Walton played an audio recording of a buzzing sound that she said came from the Atlas Data Power Center, located about one mile from her home. 

"It's our understanding they (Atlas) expect to expand, and that's what some of this power might be used for," Walton said. "I think that our power would be sufficient if it wasn't for Atlas."

Walton said some of her neighbors were in attendance at the hearing but couldn't testify because they are involved in a lawsuit against Atlas.

Basin officials estimate the cost of the transmission line at $31 million. With PSC approval, construction would begin this spring and is targeted for completion in the fall.

The Golden Valley, Minnesota offices of Center of the American Experiment were targeted by arsonists last weekend, resulting in significant fire damage to the building.

American Experiment is often referred to as a "rightwing think tank," for its defense of the fossil-fuel industry, its criticism of misguided reliance on intermittent wind and solar, and other conservative causes.  Isaac Orr, Policy Fellow with the organization, spoke at last fall's annual meeting of the Lignite Energy Council in Bismarck, describing how the EPA's onslaught of anti-coal regulations threatens the reliability of the electric grid.

The fire is being investigated as a deliberate act of arson by the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office and the Hennepin County Fire Investigation team. The offices of two other conservative organizations, the Upper Midwest Law Center (UMLC) and TakeCharge, were also targeted in the fire.

“The fires obviously were set by someone,” said John Hinderaker, president of Center of the American Experiment. “They targeted conservative organizations, they didn’t firebomb the chiropractors or psychologists or the Manufacturers Alliance. We are cooperating with the FBI to try to identify the perpetrators.”

The fires occurred around 2:00 am Sunday morning and were started outside the first-floor offices of American Experiment and TakeCharge, and in the third-floor offices of UMLC. The second floor has no visible fire damage. The three-story building houses a variety of small businesses in addition to the three conservative policy organizations.

American Experiment staff is currently working remotely while arrangements are made for alternate office space. Judging by the damage from the fire, it will take months to repair the building once the arson investigation is complete.

“This firebombing will not slow us down. American Experiment’s work for freedom is not dependent on a bricks-and-mortar location,” Hinderaker said. “In fact, we launched a new campaign today opposing (Minnesota) Gov. Walz’s new fuel standards that are more extreme, and more expensive, than even those of California, Oregon and Washington.”

Energy expert and noted author Robert Bryce has released a new docuseries that highlights how bad energy policy decisions are making the United States and other countries more vulnerable to power shortages and blackouts.

Bryce and colleague Tyson Culver decided to launch the project following the Texas blackout associated with Winter Storm Uri in February 2021. Millions of people were without electricity for days, and several hundred deaths were attributed to exposure or other causes.

"That blackout and the fact that the ERCOT grid (Electric Reliability Council of Texas) nearly collapsed, convinced us that we had to do another film," Bryce said. "And now, three years later, we accomplished what we set out to do."

The five-part docuseries, Juice: Power, Politics & The Grid, is now available for free on YouTube. Rather than make a feature-length film, Bryce said they decided to make the content as user-friendly as possible, so broke it into five episodes, each lasting about 20 minutes.

The series features 34 interviews that were shot in Texas, Japan, Vermont, Oklahoma, Colorado, California, Washington D.C., Illinois, Egypt, and England. The cast of characters includes many of the world’s top thought leaders on energy, including political scientist Roger Pielke Jr., Grid Brief editor Emmet Penney, civil rights leader Jennifer Hernandez, author Michael Shellenberger, Canadian nuclear activist Chris Keefer, author Meredith Angwin, former IEA director Nobuo Tanaka, World Nuclear Association director Sama Bilbao, Campaign for a Green Nuclear Deal founder Madi Hilly, and many others.

Bryce said he is especially proud of Episode 3, which features the Osage tribe’s battle with Enel over a wind project the company built by violating the tribe’s sovereignty.

I have been covering this issue for more than four years, so I was thrilled last month when a federal court judge in Tulsa ordered Enel to remove all 84 of the turbines it built in Osage County," Bryce said. "It’s a landmark ruling and an enormous embarrassment for Big Wind and Enel, a company that has endlessly touted its 'green' credentials."

Bryce said the goal of the project was not to make a bunch of money, but rather to change the conversation.

"We want to help alert people and policymakers about the dangers facing our electric grid and the importance of what Chris Keefer calls our 'civilizational life support system,'" Bryce said. "Our goal is to help people understand how our grid is being fragilized and why we need fission to fix it."

Juice: Power, Politics & The Grid - the Trailer
Episode 1: Texas Blackout 
Episode 2: Undermined by Enron 
Episode 3: Green Dreams
Episode 4: Nuclear Renaissance
Episode 5: Industrial Cathedrals 

Biofuels company POET and Summit Carbon Solutions announced a partnership this week connecting the world's largest biofuel producer with the world's largest carbon dioxide capture and storage project.

Summit filed an application for a pipeline siting permit in North Dakota in October 2022 to construct 320 miles of carbon dioxide pipeline, as well as a pipeline network in four neighboring states to gather CO2 from more than 30 ethanol plants. The proposed route of the ND portion would cross through parts of Burleigh, Cass, Dickey, Emmons, Logan, McIntosh, Morton, Oliver, Richland and Sargent Counties. The CO2 would then be injected into underground pore space for permanent sequestration at sites in Mercer and Oliver Counties.

The partnership between Summit and POET expands the opportunity across the Midwest by incorporating POET's 12 facilities in Iowa and five facilities in South Dakota into the Summit project. The addition will facilitate the capture, transportation, and permanent storage of 4.7 million metric tons of CO2 annually from the 17 POET bioprocessing plants.

"POET is excited to partner with Summit Carbon Solutions on this historic project," said Jeff Broin, POET Founder and CEO. "As the world seeks low-carbon energy solutions, carbon capture ensures that ag-based biofuels will remain competitive for decades to come. This is a tremendous opportunity to bring value to farmers, bioethanol producers, and rural communities and counties in participating states, and I believe it will unleash even more opportunities for ag and bioprocessing in the future."

"Our partnership with POET is creating new economic opportunities in agriculture," said Lee Blank, CEO of Summit Carbon Solutions. "This initiative is aimed at enhancing the financial profitability of our farmers, contributing to higher land values, and ensuring a more prosperous future for farm families and communities."

North Dakota’s Congressional delegation sent a letter to the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works this week, requesting the uninterrupted operation of the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Despite operating safely and securely for more than six years, DAPL was required to complete a supplemental Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the 0.21-mile easement which crosses under the Missouri River south of Bismarck. It is the third time DAPL has been examined under the National Environmental Policy Act that includes a 1,261-page Environmental Assessment in 2016 which found no significant impact, and a 2017 court-ordered remand analysis.

The delegation’s letter explained it is in the state and nation’s best interests to conclude the “seemingly endless” EIS process.

If the pipeline is closed, North Dakota could lose approximately $1.2 billion in the first year and $116 million in each subsequent year. The Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara (MHA) Nation has indicated a more-than $160 million loss over a one-year period due to about 60 percent of its oil production relying on DAPL for transportation. In addition, North Dakota could lose up to 750 full-time jobs in the near-term and 3,000 jobs in the long-term. The lawmakers note both the state of North Dakota and the MHA Nation are cooperating agencies in the Corps of Engineers’ environmental review, meaning their input must be accounted for in any final decision from the Corps.

“We are concerned the additional scrutiny being imposed on the project has little to do with actual environmental effects and more to do with opposing the type of fuel the infrastructure carries,” the delegation wrote. “Unlike other pipeline debates, DAPL has been in operation for over 6 years, demonstrating an extensive record of moving well over half a million barrels of oil per day safely and cleanly.”

One alternative the Corps is considering includes unearthing the existing pipeline and rerouting it. The delegation said the alternative is outside the jurisdiction of the federal government because the ND Public Service Commission is responsible for determining pipeline routes.

“The best course of action would be for the Corps to maintain the uninterrupted operation of the existing DAPL route. Therefore, we urge the Corps to grant the requested easement under Alternative 3 in a final Environmental Impact Statement and issue a timely Record of Decision,” the delegation concluded. 

Click here to read the letter.

February 1 seems awfully early for frost to be coming out of the ground, but with unseasonably mild weather the past couple weeks, it's happening and state and local highway officials are responding by imposing weight limits to protect roads.

The ND Department of Transportation announced seasonal weight restrictions would be enforced on several highways in the southwestern corner of the state. So-called frost laws are typically imposed from south to north, so additional restrictions in other areas can be expected in coming weeks. Load restrictions reduce damage to roadways caused by heavy loads at a time of year when highway pavements are most vulnerable.

Local road managers have followed NDDOT's lead. The City of Dickinson placed 8-ton per axle and 80,000 pound maximums on all paved roads in the city. Stark and Bowman Counties are also enforcing weight limits on all roads in the county. Billings County has placed limits on all paved roads, and Hettinger County has posted a 6-ton per axle limit on the Enchanted Highway.

Click here and toggle the Size and Weight Restrictions tab to see limits on state highways, and here to see weight restrictions on city and county roads in North Dakota.

Williston State College is close to its final engineering and design work on a new $37 million health care training facility to be built on the campus.

WSC President Bernell Hirning, in an interview with Williston Trending Topics News Radio Live, said the final schematics for the 40,000-square-foot building will be revealed at a community event set for February 23. 

The 2023 Legislature appropriated just under $28 million for the facility in the higher education budget bill (HB 1003). The balance of the cost comes from the WSC Foundation. Hirning said the facility will offer classes that local healthcare providers have sought including radiation tech, surgical tech, nursing and others.

Click here to listen to Hirning's comments.

Hirning said WSC is working on partnerships with the University of North Dakota for behavioral health and Minot State for addiction studies to address further healthcare needs for the region.

Local leaders in Williston have emphasized the importance of having additional options for healthcare training to address the shortage of healthcare workers in northwest North Dakota and northeast Montana. By introducing state-of-the-art equipment and simulated training environments, the healthcare training center is projected to expand healthcare programs at the school and improve instruction for aspiring healthcare professionals.

Hirning said once construction begins, it should take 12-to-15 months to finish the building.

Click here to listen to the full Williston Trending Topics News Radio Live interview with Hirning via Facebook Live.

H. Sterling Burnett | Heartland Institute

The Heartland Institute has long detailed the severe problems with surface temperature records, driven largely by the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect, compromising the integrity of the vast majority of temperature stations.

In a new study for The Heartland Institute, meteorologist Anthony Watts has detailed the extent to which the surface station record in the United States is compromised by station siting that violates the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) own standards for the proper siting of surface stations.

Watts’ initial 2009 study found that 89 percent of the surface stations in NOAA’s and the National Weather Service’s (NWS) system were poorly sited and biased. After the study, NOAA/NWS closed some of the most severely compromised, ridiculously sited stations highlighted in report. At the same time, however, NOAA also added thousands of previously unregulated stations established and maintained by others to its system.

The larger system provides more comprehensive coverage, but the vast majority of the stations are poorly sited. As a result, Watts’ follow up survey of NOAA’s surface station network found 96 percent of the stations used to determine U.S. average temperatures are biased upward due to poor siting. The UHI has compromised them.

How bad is the problem? As explained in an article in The Epoch Times, the Environmental Protection Agency has estimated that “daytime temperatures in urban areas are 1–7 degrees Fahrenheit higher than temperatures in outlying areas, and nighttime temperatures are about 2–5 degrees Fahrenheit higher.” Whereas the temperature record from the US Climate Reference Network indicates little or no temperature change during its 18 years of existence, the broader network supports claims that the U.S. is warming.

Another new report for the Heritage Foundation by Roy Spencer, Ph.D., principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, looks at a slightly different problem with temperatures: the difference between measured warming and climate model temperature projections. It is not just that the Earth has warmed less than biased temperature measurements indicate, it has also warmed less than climate models have said it should for the amount of CO2 humans have emitted into the atmosphere.

Spencer’s research found recent warming is likely not due solely to human greenhouse gas emissions, and the warming experienced is substantially less than climate models have predicted. 43 percent less, in fact. And that’s even when readings from the UHI-biased stations are included.

Spencer examined summertime temperature readings for 12 Corn Belt states in the United States. Each of the 36 models he compared to measured warming by surface stations, weather balloons, and global satellites overstated the amount of warming experienced, with most of the models off by 100 percent or more. Spencer is also working on a large-scale study to explain the discrepancy between urban and rural temperature stations globally, and how that plays into recent claims temperatures are setting all-time records. His preliminary data suggests measured warming is strongly correlated to population density. As cities grow, and populations increase and become more densely packed, temperatures in urban and suburban areas rise faster than in the surrounding countryside, once again confirming Watts’ conclusion that the temperature record is compromised by UHI.

For the first time ever, scholars and the public will have the opportunity to delve into the legacy of Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Edmund Morris, through a collection of private research and memorabilia. The Morris Archives, recently acquired by the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library (TRPL), will be housed at the Theodore Roosevelt Center at Dickinson State University.

Over his lifetime, Morris’s work transformed the way we think about the 26th president. The archive includes an extensive collection of notes, documents, audio and video tapes, photographs, and various personal ephemera and memorabilia, especially surrounding Morris’s well-known works such as The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, Theodore Rex, and Colonel Roosevelt. The archive opens a window into not only Morris’s life, but the treasures of Theodore Roosevelt’s life.

The volume of the collection is quite expansive, with the Morris papers filling 151 bankers’ boxes. However, the significance is even more impactful. Morris kept exacting records of his work and personal reflections on the men he profiled. The collection also includes the papers of Sylvia Jukes Morris, his wife and literary equal, who wrote biographies of First Lady Edith Kermit Roosevelt and Congresswoman Clare Booth Luce.

“A complete analysis of Theodore Roosevelt’s life is not possible without consulting Edmund Morris," said Ed O'Keefe, CEO of TRPL. "With this addition, this project’s commitment to scholarship and historical analysis is brought to new heights."

The Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library is being built near Medora, and is expected to open in July 2026.

Registration is now open for the ND Petroleum Foundation's annual teacher education seminar to be held June 24-27 on the campus of Bismarck State College.

The Foundation hosts the seminar for educators to learn about the oil industry and take projects, lessons, and ideas back to the classroom. The seminar also helps educators translate to their students how geography, math, chemistry, geometry, etc. tie into the oil and gas industry and careers.

The seminar is open to teachers and guidance counselors who are currently practicing full time in a North Dakota public or private school. Teachers from South Dakota and Montana who are near oil and gas development may also apply.

Participants will be eligible for two professional development credits from MSU, NDSU or UND. The credits may be used for general teacher license renewals. The university will charge a fee to participants wanting the optional credit. Please note this is a repeat course and past participants are not eligible for repeat credit.

The seminar itself is free and includes:

• All course materials
• Three nights lodging on the BSC campus
• Most meals in conjunction with the seminar

Click here to register for the seminar.

Unseasonably mild temperatures continued this week, with some locations in southwestern North Dakota topping 60 degrees. The warm weather melted a lot of snow and even produced some running water in rivers and streams in western North Dakota. Some of the changes were document by the high-resolution cameras on WDEA's Wise Roads weather stations. Photos from Wise Roads cameras are updated continuously throughout the daylight hours on the Wise Roads web page.

The Wise Roads project (Weather Information System to Effectively Reduce Oilfield Delays and Disruptions) was developed by WDEA to increase the efficiency of the movement of oilfield truck traffic. Most weather stations were placed in the core area of Bakken production, focusing on Dunn, McKenzie, Mountrail and Williams Counties. The project provides more accurate weather information to county road managers, especially about rain events, to minimize the need to impose weight restrictions when gravel roads get wet. It was developed in partnership with NDAWN, which maintains the stations for WDEA. The project was also assisted with a $250,000 grant from the Oil & Gas Research Council.

Fifty new stations have been installed, 39 of which are located in the four core oil-producing counties. Prior to the start of the project, Dunn and McKenzie Counties had just one station each, Mountrail County had three and Williams County had four. Weather station data and high-resolution photos can be found at wiseroadsnd.com. Additional information is also available from NDAWN. 

Featured shots this week are clockwise from upper left, Powers Lake, with a hefty coating of snow last Thursday; Powers Lake, just six days later with barely any snow visible; Sunny Slope, with running water in the Little Missouri River; and Marmarth, with a few deer along the fence line as the sun rises on the distant horizon. Click on the link for a high-resolution image.