ModeShift - Part 41

Is American Energy Exploration and Production Breaking the Great Recession?

by Keith SchneiderDecember 22, 2011December 23, 20111

WILLISTON, ND — The Saturday morning earlier this month that Scott Terrell and I had breakfast at Gramma Sharon’s Family Restaurant, every seat was taken by roughnecks and drivers fueling up before heading out to work this state’s giant oil patch. The line of customers waiting to pay their bills was so long I did something I rarely do on reporting trips. I left cash on the table and utterly violated the ethos expressed on …

Bakken Oil Wells Surround North Dakota National Park

by Keith SchneiderDecember 21, 2011December 22, 20110

MEDORA, ND — Buck Hill is one of the tallest points in Theodore Roosevelt National Park, which spreads across more than 70,000 acres of grass and tight canyons where North Dakota meets South Dakota and Montana. Several weeks ago Valerie Naylor, the park superintendent, hiked to the summit and counted six oil drilling platforms within eyesight. In the next few months more rigs will surround the park’s boundaries. With them will come open waste pits …

Boom in Bakken Oil Play, and Elsewhere Starting to Drive U.S. Economy

by Keith SchneiderDecember 20, 2011January 18, 20120

WILLISTON, ND — After dark beyond Williston’s last lit living room, and heading east on state highway 1804, North Dakota’s landscape turns alien. Steel towers of active oil drilling rigs, flooded by lights as bright as a sports stadium, flank every steep rise. The orange flare gas fires, like 20-foot birthday flames, break the pitch dark of every plunge into deep valleys. The sound of ceaseless prairie winds, and big trucks hauling water and drilling …

In North Dakota’s Bakken Oil Field, The Smell of Diesel, the Sound of Trucks

by Keith SchneiderDecember 19, 2011March 8, 20125

WILLISTON, ND — Past midnight at the station platform in Spokane, 850 miles east of this riotous Great Plains city riding the lashing tail of an oil drilling dragon, the roustabouts and heavy equipment operators kiss wives and girlfriends, then reluctantly board Amtrak’s Empire Builder. Twenty-one day shifts, 14 hours a day, in wind-whipped cold and in a perilous work zone that can maim or kill has a way of quelling enthusiasm — even when …

Uptown As Cleveland’s Downtown in New York Times

by Keith SchneiderNovember 29, 2011May 22, 20140

The New York Times today published my latest piece on places that are doing many of the right things to prosper and thrive in the 21st century. In this case it’s the collaboration between city officials, developers, institutions, universities, foundations, and bankers in Cleveland to produce the new Uptown District along Euclid Avenue. In the last couple of months I’ve reported on how Toledo is recruiting Chinese investment capital to redevelop its Maumee River waterfront. …

Oil Production Soars, Prices Fall, Water Contest Grows

by Keith SchneiderNovember 27, 2011November 27, 20110

The Department of Energy earlier thisÂ month reported that crude oil production in the United States climbed to 5.88 million barrels per day, the most since 1998. Meanwhile the share of oil demand taken up by imports is declining. After nearly three decades of steadily falling domestic production, the U.S. is now in the midst of an oil boom that is in its third straight year, with no sign of abating. Last night on the …

More on the Energy Boom and Water

by Keith SchneiderNovember 27, 2011November 27, 2011

Since June 2010, Circle of Blue has pursued a comprehensive and ground breaking reporting project – Choke Point: U.S. — to understand the confrontation between energy production and fresh water supply. Circle of Blue, where I serve as senior editor, is a non-partisan, non-profit, online news organization covering the global freshwater crisis from our six-person newsroom in Traverse City, Michigan. You’ll see from the Web site that when it comes to serious original reporting on …

Donald Spitzer, Last Of A Great Cambridge Family, Is Gone

by Keith SchneiderNovember 19, 2011November 27, 20119

When you ask his friends and family what they most admired about Donald Spitzer, the answers included his quick wit, his considerable intelligence, and his great love for family and friends. They also note that in a family of gifted athletes Donald was tall and slim and gawky. And in a family of rugged Hungarian menÂ skilled in pounding wrought iron into graceful swirls and curves, Donald trained to be a graphic artist in the …

Owensboro’s Downtown Development Plan in New York Times

by Keith SchneiderNovember 16, 2011February 3, 20146

The New York Times today published my article on Owensboro’s downtown development plan, much of it financed by a local tax increase enacted in 2009. Though the public spending has spurred new development and thousands of jobs in the last two years — Owensboro has generated 2,400 jobs in 2010 and 2011, more than any other Kentucky metro area — just two of the seven elected leaders who voted for it are still in office. …

Squirrels Are Smarter

by Keith SchneiderNovember 10, 2011November 10, 20110

Near the last days of fall color in Michigan’s northwest corner, where I live, squirrels were especially active. They darted across the two-lane roads in front of my bicycle. On one ride to Glen Arbor (that’s Glen Lake in pix above) you could hear their quickening steps on the forest’s dry leaves, like the brushed strokes on a tight snare drum. Foraging and darting, they prepared for a cold winter. We are told that people …