Page 20 ■ Thursday, February 16, 2012 ENERGY BRIEFS ND oil lease sale raises $85M for school trust
An auction for the rights to drill for oil on North Dakota state lands raised $85.3 million on Feb. 7. The state Department of Trust Lands auctioned exploration rights to almost
70,000 acres in 14 western North Dakota counties. The average payment ranged from just over a dollar per acre in Grant Coun-
ty to almost $7,900 per acre in McKenzie County. The money goes into trust funds that benefi t education. The largest one has
more than $1.6 billion in assets. It distributes money to public schools. State trust lands commissioner Lance Gaebe said the auction was successful.
He said he expected to see between $60 million and $100 million raised. Gaebe said speculators took a chance on some land in areas of North Dakota that don’t produce oil right now.
— Associated Press
Mont. homicide suspect waives extradition hearing BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — A suspect in a Montana negligent homicide case
has waived his right to challenge extradition from North Dakota to face charg- es.
Charles Bowen, 46, of Tavares, Fla. is being held in Williston, N.D., after his
arrest last month in the killing of a man who had been working in the region’s booming oil patch. Authorities said Brian Doyle, 49, also of Florida, was killed when he was run
over by a motor vehicle along U.S. Highway 2. Doyle’s body was found outside of Bainville, a small community in Roosevelt County near the North Dakota border. Further details have not been released. Roosevelt County Sheriff Freedom Crawford said his offi ce has not yet made plans to bring Bowen back to Montana.
Tesoro, USW don’t reach agreement Tesoro and local members of the United Steelworkers union failed to reach
a contract agreement Feb. 6. The USW Local 9429 members who work at the Tesoro refi nery in Mandan
are continuing negotiations, according to USW spokeswoman Lynne Hancock. She would not comment on which parts of the proposed contract members
disagree. The union has until Feb. 17 to ratify a new contract. If an agreement is not
reached by then, the union will ask for an extension of the existing contract Hancock said. Tesoro would not comment on the negotiations.
— Jessica Holdman
NATION & WORLD
TransCanada hopes for 2015 Keystone startup
By ROB GILLIES Associated Press
TORONTO (AP) — TransCanada has pushed back the possible startup date of a controversial pipeline that would carry Canadian oil to refi neries in Texas. The Calgary, Alberta-based company
said Feb. 14 in an earnings release that its executives continue to work with Ne- braska to determine the best route that avoids Nebraska’s environmentally sen- sitive Sandhills region. Last month, the administration of
President Barack Obama denied a per- mit for the project, but left the door open for TransCanada to apply for a new pipe- line route. The company said last month it expected the new application would be processed in an expedited manner so that it could be in service in late 2014. TransCanada has now moved that
back to early 2015. The company said it remains fully
committed to the construction of Key- stone XL and said “plans are already un- der way on a number of fronts to largely maintain the construction schedule of the project.” They reiterated that they will reapply
for a permit and that they expect a new application would be processed in an ex- pedited manner. The U.S. State Department, however,
has previously said it wouldn’t necessar- ily expedite what would be a new review process. Obama blocked the $7 billion pipe- line last month, saying offi cials did not have enough time to review the project before a February deadline imposed by Congress.
The pipeline would carry 800,000
barrels of oil a day from Alberta across six U.S. states to the Texas Gulf Coast,
which has numerous refi neries. TransCanada fi rst applied to build the pipeline in 2008, under the George W. Bush administration. TransCanada says the pipeline could
create as many as 20,000 jobs, a fi gure opponents say is infl ated. A State De- partment report last summer said the pipeline would create up to 6,000 jobs during construction The pipeline is a dicey proposition
for Obama, who enjoyed strong support from both organized labor and environ- mentalists in his 2008 campaign for the White House. Environmental advocates have made it clear that approval of the pipeline would dampen their enthusiasm for Obama in November. Some liberal do- nors even threatened to cut off funds to Obama’s re-election campaign to protest the project, which opponents say would transport “dirty oil” that requires huge amounts of energy to extract and con- tributes to greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming. By rejecting the pipeline, Obama also
risks losing support from organized la- bor, a key part of the Democratic base, for thwarting thousands of jobs.
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