Legalectric

Age – wax on wood, Italy, circa late 1600’s

… yeah, this goes in the “energy” category, but it’s really “lack thereof.” Since I’ve been sick, and have three more weeks of drugs, well, thankfully I no longer feel like something the dog urped up, but oh, it’s slow going, yesterday getting up north, being “on” in Grand Rapids and then getting back this morning… it’s not just that the pups snouts are both turning noticibly grey, what’s worse is that I’ve got to admit that I can’t drive all night anymore, can’t write on no sleep either, and so there I was in the grocery store, barely able to haul my carcass in there after 250+ miles, got rung up and I’d handed over nearly exact change, and got back more than I’d expected. HUH? She pointed at the sign, “Senior Discount.” It’s Senior Day at the store, 55 and over. My first “Senior” discount. I’ll fight that another day, today I felt twice that! Send that one to Jeremy Iggers!

You may have heard there’s a 24″ oil pipeline coming across Scott and Dakota counties on it’s way to Koch Refinery from Canada — you may even have heard about it on Ray’s blog!

It’s called the MinnCan Project, and it’s real, and the Certificate of Need and Siting Prehearing Conference is scheduled for Friday, March 17 @ 9:30 a.m. at the PUC, probably the Small Hearing Room. Here’s where it’s going in our neck of the woods:

Scott County View image

Dakota County View image

There will be two public informational meetings held the following week:

Scott County Meeting
New Prague
New Prague Middle School Cafeteria
March 22, 2006
6-9 pm

Dakota County Meeting
Farmington
Rambling River Center Dining Room
March 23, 2006
6-9 pm

They’ve already been appropriately challenged about failure to give notice to landowners, maybe by now landowners are getting individual specific notice as they should…

Hey Mike — what’s up with the biodiesel? The headlines say there’s trouble, and I can just hear my old boss, Craig Bongard, Bongard Trucking in Farmington, yammering about biodiesel, we went at it a few times about it, and I can hear him hollering about this. Makes me wonder what the fuss is about. Here it is, just after the first cold snap — is this just happening in trucks without tank heaters??? I’ve got to admit, when it’s cold out, I don’t miss driving…

In the Strib:

Sputtering trucks lead state to life fuel rule

And in the St.PPP:

State biodiesel law on hold

My truck over Xmas week 1988, or was it ’87, taken at the Magic Wand in Vegas…

Things that go boom — and things that make you go hmmmmmmmmm…

There’s natural gas geysering up in Oklahoma.

A dam gave way in Missouri.

But first a little history…

Hutchinson gas geyser near trailer park explosion site

Nancy Prehn, my client in Waseca, the one who Sen. Dick Day says is “the most viscious woman I’ve met in 29 years in office,” the one who lives on top of the dome, on top of 7 billion c.f. of natural gas, has wondered about the safety of underground natural gas storage. She found that not too long ago, downtown Hutchinson, Kansas blew up, lit up, when gas came up through abandoned wells downtown and in a trailer park. See the Kansas Geological Survey site for details.

Explosion and fire in downtown Hutchinson

A housing development was proposed above gas storage in Playa del Ray, California, and in a press release experts warned against combining the two:

In their recently published book titled, “Gas Migration” (Butterworth-Heinemann Publishers), George V. Chilingar, PhD, (Professor of Petroleum and Environmental Engineering, University of Southern California), John O. Robertson, Jr., PhD (Registered Petroleum Engineer), and Bernard Endres, PhD, (Oil and Gas Environmental Consultant), warn that housing should never be built over these high-pressure sites because of the problem of uncontrolled gas migration through the geological substrata.

So what’s happening now???

OKLAHOMA GAS ERUPTION