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Wyoming lawmakers appear ready to change the state’s wolf management law to accommodate an agreement that Gov. Matt Mead and U.S. Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar reached last year on ending federal protections for the animals in the state. Under the agreement, wolves could be shot on sight in much of the state. The Republican governor has made wolf management a priority, saying the animals threaten agricultural interests and other wildlife. Officials say there are about 300 wolves in the state, and Mead has said the population grows by 10 percent every year. Under the deal, Wyoming would commit to...

Rick Santorum made an odd comment in North Dakota on Wednesday. Praising the state for its energy production, he warned his audience that its success in the field might lead to terrorist attacks. CNN reports: Rick Santorum warned a quiet North Dakota audience Wednesday that their state’s booming oil industry positioned the region as a prime target for terrorism. “Folks, you’ve got energy here. They’re going to bother you

WASHINGTON, D.C., February 13, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – Within weeks, the top lawyers in a dozen states may file a federal lawsuit against the Obama administration’s controversial requirement that all insurance plans include access to abortion-inducing drugs, contraception, and sterilization, the attorney general of Nebraska told LifeSiteNews. Jon Bruning told LifeSiteNews.com that 12 states had signed onto a scathing critique of the mandate and were preparing to take more serious action. Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning On Friday, ten state attorneys general addressed a scathing letter to President Obama, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis....

LAS VEGAS — Newt Gingrich is wooing NASCAR voters. As he charts a possible course to the Republican nomination, aides say Gingrich will paint frontrunner Mitt Romney as the candidate of the PGA golf tour while the former House speaker pursues the blue collar mantle of Dale Earnhardt. It’s a strategy that exploits the class warfare Gingrich professes to oppose. Still, it could pay dividends once the GOP race again swings South. Gingrich sees delegate-rich Texas as a firewall in April. But he must slog through more than 30 contests before that....

BOTTINEAU It wouldn't be surprising if Jonathan Bartlett bleeds red, white and blue. The Bottineau resident has a deepening appreciation for this nation's founding fathers and early citizens and citizen soldiers. A few years ago, Bartlett was introduced to Project Appleseed, a combination heritage and marksmanship program conducted by the Revolutionary War Veterans Association. He was so captured by the experience that he continues to rise through the ranks of RWVA. "It was inspiring. It motivated me to be involved," said Bartlett. "Something really connected with the shooting aspect and the history of our founding. Our founders inspired our free...

BISMARCK, N.D.—North Dakota granted a fourth extension of state aid for study of a plan to build a coal-to-liquid fuel factory, while the project's developers wait to see if the political climate in Washington changes after the presidential election. Dallas-based North American Coal Corp. and Headwaters Inc. of South Jordan, Utah, formed American Lignite Energy LLC in 2007 to oversee construction and operation of the $4 billion plant at a yet-to-be chosen site in western North Dakota. David Straley, a North American Coal Corp. spokesman said a decision on whether to start construction depends on a change of political climate...

BISMARCK The preliminary November data released Tuesday by the North Dakota Oil and Gas Division indicates North Dakota now is producing more than half a million barrels of oil per day. That's about 510,000 barrels produced a day in the month of November. "This is big news for the state and the country. A half a million barrels a day represents about 10 percent of U.S. production. That's enough oil to displace imports from Iraq or Columbia," said Lynn Helms, Bismarck, director of the North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources, in a news release issued Tuesday. The Oil and Gas...

Enbridge Inc. has received regulatory approval for its Bakken Pipeline project, adding much needed capacity out of the prolific and pipeline-constrained U.S. play. The $180-million pipeline will move crude from the Bakken and Three Forks formations in Montana and North Dakota to Cromer, Man., via a new pump station at Steelman, Sask. “We’re pleased to receive the board’s approval of our Canadian Bakken project and to be able to move forward with this component of our broader expansion plans in the Bakken in both Canada and in North Dakota,” Perry Schuldhaus, Enbridge vice-president of regional pipeline development, said today. “The...

Dem Keystone support creates tougher fight for Reid, ObamaBy Alexander Bolton - 12/16/11 04:08 PM ET Republicans want to jam Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on the Keystone oil sands pipeline and the Democratic leader will have a tough time resisting, given support within his caucus for the project. GOP leaders have made clear to Reid that they will not approve an extension of the payroll tax holiday unless it includes language to speed up construction of the pipeline. Senate Republicans estimate as many as 14 Senate Democrats support the project. Labor unions have also voiced strong backing, complicating...

Unmanned aircraft from an Air Force base in North Dakota help local police with surveillance, raising questions that trouble privacy advocates. Armed with a search warrant, Nelson County Sheriff Kelly Janke went looking for six missing cows on the Brossart family farm in the early evening of June 23. Three men brandishing rifles chased him off, he said. Janke knew the gunmen could be anywhere on the 3,000-acre spread in eastern North Dakota. Fearful of an armed standoff, he called in reinforcements from the state Highway Patrol, a regional SWAT team, a bomb squad, ambulances and deputy sheriffs from three...

Enbridge Energy Partners LP (EEP) will expand its Berthold rail terminal capacity in the Bakken shale by 80,000 b/d and include a rail car loading facility to accommodate the additional volume. EEP has contractual commitments for 70% of the rail loading capacity and anticipates it will soon finalize agreements for the remaining capacity. The Berthold Rail Project includes construction of a double-loop unit-train facility, crude oil tankage, and other terminal facilities adjacent to its existing facilities near Berthold, ND. The project will have capacity to stage three unit-trains at Berthold at any given time. After an initial 10,000 b/d Phase...

Two polls conducted by reputable Democratic pollsters show Republican Rep. Rick Berg to be in serious trouble in the North Dakota Senate race, especially now that former state Attorney General Heidi Heitkamp (D) has entered the race. The first survey, conducted in mid-August well before Heitkamp jumped into the contest, was conducted by Garin-Hart-Yang Research Group. It found voters preferring Berg over a Democrat by a mere 4 points — 44 percent to 40 percent — in a generic Senate ballot test. Only 33 percent of respondents rated Berg’s job performance as good or excellent, while 55 percent termed it...

New Energy: The latest salvo in the administration's war on energy may be new rules and permits to regulate a process to get oil and gas from porous rock, sacrificing jobs and economic growth while under review. There are a few areas of the U.S. that are booming. Two of these are in North Dakota and Pennsylvania, states that sit atop two massive shale rock formations, the Bakken and the Marcellus. Extraction of oil and natural gas from these formations have created jobs and economic growth in the midst of a stagnant and parched economy. The oil and gas is...

Williston, North Dakota is a dusty, prairie town. It’s just a stone’s throw from the Canadian border. Up until few years ago, few Americans had ever heard of it. Now they’re flocking there in droves. Even strippers from Vegas are making the migration. You see, there’s no recession in Williston. Far from it: The city’s unemployment rate is close to zero. The majority of the jobs sport starting salaries north of $100,000 a year. That’s not a typo: Six figures to start. It’s a real honest-to-goodness Western boomtown. The city’s two strip clubs are packed seven nights a week. They’re...

TIOGA, N.D. — As much as the drilling rigs that tower over this once placid corner of the prairie, the two communities springing up just outside of town testify to the galloping pace of growth here in oil country. They are called man camps — temporary housing compounds supporting the overwhelmingly male work force flooding the region in search of refuge from a stormy economy. These two, Capital Lodge and Tioga Lodge, built on opposite sides of a highway, will have up to 3,700 residents, according to current plans. Confronted with the unusual problem of too many unfilled jobs and...

Energy Policy: Killing the Keystone XL pipeline may help one of the world's richest men get richer. North Dakota's booming oil fields will now grow more dependent on a railroad the president's economic guru just bought. Stop us if you see a pattern here. About the time George Soros — Hungarian billionaire and key donor to leftist groups and the Democratic Party — invested heavily in the stock of the state-run Brazilian oil company Petrobras, President Obama was curbing U.S. offshore oil production and the U.S. Export-Import Bank announced a $2 billion loan to Petrobras to finance deep-water drilling off...

The cold autumn wind whipping North Dakota’s Badlands carries a new seasonal risk to the oil markets: an abrupt slowdown in the breakneck expansion of the Bakken oil shale bonanza. Fierce winters — where temperatures drop as low as minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit (-40 degree Celsius) and snow piles up to 107 inches (2.7 meters) — have in recent years impeded work on oil wells and slowed traffic across the white prairie, halting a relentless oil production boom that has upended the market. The volumes are small but important: if fewer barrels of new oil are added to the market,...

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Sunday that he was looking at exporting more oil to China after the United States delayed a decision on a controversial pipeline. President Barack Obama's administration last week put off a decision on Keystone XL project after a major protest campaign by environmentalists, who say the pipeline would be prone to accidents and worsen climate change. The conservative Canadian leader, taking part in a summit in Hawaii hosted by Obama said the pipeline decision had produced "extremely negative reactions" and that he discussed oil exports with Chinese President Hu Jintao.

In the end, it came down to a conversation between two of the most powerful people in the world. Earlier this week, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke with President Barack Obama about a pipeline set to run from Alberta’s oil sands down through the U.S. Midwest to reach refineries on the Texas coast of the Gulf of Mexico. ... “It’s blatant politics,” said David Wilkins, former U.S. ambassador to Canada, in an interview Friday. Mr. Wilkins lobbied for Keystone on behalf of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. “It’s politics at its worst. It was a move by...

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) -- Like many of her classmates and University of North Dakota students who came before her, senior Annie Hessinger says it doesn't matter that the school is shedding its 81-year-old nickname after a drawn-out dispute with the NCAA. She's Fighting Sioux and always will be, no matter what new nickname the school eventually picks. She'll still wear clothing bearing the Fighting Sioux logo, a colorful profile of an American Indian warrior's head.

Gov. Jack Dalrymple announced Thursday that North Dakota was credited with the best economic index in the nation, according to the Bloomberg Economic Evaluation of States Index. The study, which tracks the pace of state economic growth, ranked North Dakota No. 1 in the nation, citing job creation and increased incomes as key indicators. Bloomberg also reported that North Dakota was the only state in the nation to experience a positive economic index. With the exception of North Dakota, economic conditions in all other states are worse than they were at the end of 2008, according to the study. “This...

A truck delivers crude to the Bakken Oil Express Rail Hub in Dickinson, N.D., where it is loaded onto rail cars. DICKINSON, N.D.—A surge in crude-oil production in North Dakota is fueling a railroad boom in one of the nation's most remote regions, as producers bet that trains will be a quick and lucrative way to break a transportation bottleneck. The steady conveyor belt of jet-black rail cars is just the latest change in this state's western corner. Already clusters of trailers, known as man camps, have popped up in pasture lands outside of small towns like Watford City, N.D.,...

The Spirit Lake tribe Tuesday sued the NCAA for blocking its attempt to let the University of North Dakota use the sports nickname Fighting Sioux. Tribal attorney Reed Soderstrom said the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court challenges the NCAA's policy banning the use of Native American names and imagery by collegiate athletic teams. He said the suit against the National Collegiate Athletic Association was brought on behalf of more than 1,004 members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe "in direct response to their attempt to take away and prevent the North Dakota Sioux Indians from giving their name forever...

Spirit Lake Tribal Council representatives announced this morning that legal action has been taken against the NCAA over the Fighting Sioux nickname and logo. According to attorney Reed Soderstrom, representing the Committee of Understanding and Respect, and Archie Fool Bear, individually and on behalf of 1,004 petitioners from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, the lawsuit against the NCAA was filed in response to their ruling on the nickname and subsequent sanctions. The lawsuit involves 12 counts, including copyright infringement, lack of jurisdiction and “intentional infliction of emotional distress on the Sioux people.”

Jim Stout, an English professor at Williston State College in Williston N.D., started losing some of his best students to the oil fields last year. It was too hard to compete: The students could either spend thousands of dollars on a college education or earn $100,000 a year working on the rigs, performing maintenance on oil wells or driving trucks. "At some point they decide, 'Well, college will always be here ... but the oil boom won't,'" he said. One engineering student dropped out of college last winter to take a job boiling the water used in hydraulic fracturing. In...

Last week the unthinkable happened.  While you were distracted by the banal and only marginally important presidential primaries, the lion, Harvard Law School, publicly lay down with the lamb, the Tea Party Patriots.  The long-term political implications are, potentially, far more potent than a mere presidency. The SuperElite and the SuperPopulists convened at Harvard for a “Conference for a Constitutional Convention.”  It was co-hosted by Lawrence Lessig, from Harvard, and by Mark Meckler, co-founder of the 850,000 member Tea Party Patriots. Lessig is a leading figure on the social democratic left, the director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for...

WILLISTON, N.D. (CNNMoney) -- Forget Vegas. Strippers are discovering they can make ten times as much dancing in the oil boomtown of Williston, N.D. Thousands of men have come here seeking high-paying jobs working for the oil companies. And, at the end of the day (or four or five days when they're working on a rig), many of them are looking for some female companionship at one of the town's two strip club's, Whispers or Heartbreakers

You may have gotten wind of the seven North Dakota oil companies recently charged in federal court with the deaths of 28 migratory birds. The birds allegedly landed in oil waste pits in western North Dakota last spring; the maximum penalty for each charge under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act is six months in prison and a $15,000 fine, the AP said. But did you know that wind-power companies are responsible for more than 400,000 bird deaths annually, and not one has faced a single charge? The Wall Street Journal knows it, opining yesterday that the prosecutions are “bird-brained,” especially...

Norway's Statoil will build more crude shipping capacity in the Williston Basin of North Dakota and Montana as part of its $4.4 billion bid for Austin-based Brigham Exploration a company executive said on Monday. The Norwegian state oil company said it would build more shipping capacity, with a focus on pipelines, but did not commit itself to any specific pipeline project. Analysts said that because of the deal's steep cost, the oil major will have to invest in infrastructure projects to recover some of its investment as it ramps up production. Statoil is looking to enter the Bakken and Three...

Kazakhstan flies in US cows to boost beef industryAssociated Press Updated Monday, Oct 10 at 12:01 PM BISMARCK, North Dakota (AP) — Hundreds of North Dakota cows bred to withstand brutal cold are being shipped in jumbo jets to Kazakhstan to help build the nation's beef industry. **SNIP** North Dakota is known for its harsh winters and hardy livestock, Price said. North Dakota cows typically have thicker coats and more marbling and fatty tissue, state agriculture officials say. More than 2,600 pregnant cows and heifers were shipped last year on Boeing 747 freighters from North Dakota to Astana, the capital...

North Dakota is poised to surpass California and Alaska to become the nation's No. 2 oil producer behind Texas. North Dakota's rise in oil production from the Bakken and Three Forks shale formations has propelled it from the nation's ninth-biggest oil producer to fourth since 2006. ... North Dakota is producing about 444,000 barrels daily.

Senate Republicans vow they will retaliate for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) decision to unilaterally change the Senate’s rules Thursday without prior warning or negotiation. Republican aides say their bosses will now be even more reluctant to allow the Senate to conduct routine business by unanimous consent, forcing Reid to gather 60 votes for even the most mundane matters. “Reid fired a major salvo and it’s hard to imagine a return shot won’t be fired. Maybe over the weekend they’ll come up with something and try to make it less worse than it already is,” said a Senate...

Unemployment rates fell in roughly two-thirds of large U.S. cities in August, despite zero job growth nationwide. Here are the cities with the highest and lowest rates: Best and Worst Metro areas Figures are in percentages Highest unemployment rates August 2011 El Centro, Calif. 32.4 Lowest unemployment rates August 2011 Bismarck, N.D. 3.0

Are you unemployed and out of options? Well, if you live in most areas of the country there is not much hope for you. But there is one state where hiring is really hot right now. If you are desperate for a job, you just might want to check out North Dakota. Way back in the middle of the 19th centurty, author Horace Greeley gave young Americans the following advice: "Go West, young man, go West". Well, we have reached another moment in U.S. history when it may be wise for many Americans to pick up and move to...

Mr. Hamm was one of the pioneers of this method in the 1990s, and it has done for the oil industry what hydraulic fracturing has done for natural gas drilling in places like the Marcellus Shale in the Northeast. Both innovations have unlocked decades worth of new sources of domestic fossil fuels that previously couldn't be extracted at affordable cost. Mr. Hamm's rags to riches success is the quintessential "only in America" story. He was the last of 13 kids, growing up in rural Oklahoma "the son of sharecroppers who never owned land." He didn't have money to go to...

You may have gotten wind of the seven North Dakota oil companies recently charged in federal court with the deaths of 28 migratory birds. The birds allegedly landed in oil waste pits in western North Dakota last spring; the maximum penalty for each charge under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act is six months in prison and a $15,000 fine, the AP said. But did you know that wind-power companies are responsible for more than 400,000 bird deaths annually, and not one has faced a single charge? The Wall Street Journal knows it, opining yesterday that the prosecutions are “bird-brained,” especially...

Harold Hamm, the Oklahoma-based founder and CEO of Continental Resources, the 14th-largest oil company in America, is a man who thinks big. He came to Washington last month to spread a needed message of economic optimism: With the right set of national energy policies, the United States could be "completely energy independent by the end of the decade. We can be the Saudi Arabia of oil and natural gas in the 21st century." "President Obama is riding the wrong horse on energy," he adds. We can't come anywhere near the scale of energy production to achieve energy independence by pouring...

Austin Mitchell, left, and Ryan Lehto work on an oil derrick outside of Williston, N.D. Many are calling the oil boom here the largest in recent North American history. Reporting from Watford City, N.D.— If people anywhere in the nation should feel good about the economy, it's those living in North Dakota, where an oil boom is creating so many jobs that even taco joints offer $15 an hour to attract employees. Drawn by the promise of well-paying jobs, people from across the country flock here and settle in the makeshift clusters of RV campers and manufactured mobile homes that...

Harold Hamm, the Oklahoma-based founder and CEO of Continental Resources, the 14th-largest oil company in America, is a man who thinks big. He came to Washington last month to spread a needed message of economic optimism: With the right set of national energy policies, the United States could be "completely energy independent by the end of the decade. We can be the Saudi Arabia of oil and natural gas in the 21st century." "President Obama is riding the wrong horse on energy," he adds. We can't come anywhere near the scale of energy production to achieve energy independence by pouring...

An 82-year-old Jamestown man held an intruder at gunpoint Wednesday morning before turning him over to the police, according to the Jamestown Police Department. Police said 26-year-old Justin T. Schlepp, Devils Lake, N.D., was arrested after he allegedly broke into the home of the 82-year-old man and his 82-year-old wife in southwest Jamestown. Police said the wife heard a loud bang around 4 a.m. She got up, but didn’t hear more noise and went to the bathroom. While there, she saw someone open the bathroom door. Thinking it was her husband, she returned to bed, only to find her husband...

Two years ago, America was importing about two thirds of its oil. Today, according to the Energy Information Administration, it imports less than half. And by 2017, investment bank Goldman Sachs predicts the US could be poised to pass Saudi Arabia and overtake Russia as the world's largest oil producer. Places like Williston are the reason why. "For many years, they knew that there was oil in that area, but the technology wasn't available to get it out," the town's mayor, Ward Koeser, tells weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz. But in the last few years, advances in...

Police say union supporters have directed racial slurs and racist symbols at replacement workers and security personnel outside an American Crystal Sugar plant in North Dakota. Traill County Sheriff Mike Crocker says there have been racial statements made to security people outside of the company's Hillsboro facility. He says he recently saw a monkey-like figure hanging from a noose attached to a large inflatable rat outside the plant. He says it was removed the next day. The Grand Forks Herald reported Tuesday (http://bit.ly/oQfZWj) that many of the replacement workers are from Southern states, and some are minorities. Union representative Mark...

<p>GRAND FORKS, N.D. - Police say union supporters have directed racial slurs and racist symbols at replacement workers and security personnel outside an American Crystal Sugar plant in North Dakota.</p>

When it comes to energy, America is lucky to be next to Canada, whose proven oil reserves are estimated by Oil and Gas Journal at 175 billion barrels. This ranks just behind Saudi Arabia (260 billion) and Venezuela (211 billion) and ahead of Iran (137 billion) and Iraq (115 billion). True, about 97% of Canada's reserves consist of Alberta's controversial oil sands, but new technologies and high oil prices have made them economically viable. Expanded production can provide the U.S. market with a source of secure oil for decades. We would be crazy to turn our back on this. In...

GRAND FORKS – The image Bennett Brien created a dozen years ago, borne into a cauldron of zealous admiration and bitter controversy and destined apparently for retirement by the end of this year, should not be called a logo, the artist insists. “It’s not a logo,” he said. “It’s a symbol.” And the symbolism of the Native American man depicted in his design for the University of North Dakota has been misunderstood, he said.

North Dakota and Montana have an estimated 3.0 to 4.3 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil in an area known as the Bakken Formation. A U.S. Geological Survey assessment, released April 10, shows a 25-fold increase in the amount of oil that can be recovered compared to the agency's 1995 estimate of 151 million barrels of oil.

The Bakken oil boom has bolstered North Dakota's employment rate and tax revenues, but also has created a number of challenges for state and local government as well as producers operating in the Bakken, according to a report by the Energy Policy Research Foundation. North Dakota has been an oil producing state for 60 years, but only during the past three years has the Bakken boom made North Dakota the fourth largest oil producing state in the U.S. and one of the largest onshore plays in the country. The success of the Bakken, which the U.S. Geological Survey estimated in...

The death of North Dakota Senate Republican majority leader Bob Stenehjem leaves questions about how his successor will be chosen

North Dakota's Senate majority leader, Bob Stenehjem, was not wearing a seat belt and was thrown from the sport utility vehicle he was driving when he was killed in an Alaskan highway crash, authorities said Tuesday.

<p>State Sen. Bob Stenehjem, who was North Dakota’s Senate Republican majority leader for a decade, was killed Monday in a one-vehicle accident in Alaska, family members said.</p> <p>Stenehjem, 59, had been on a halibut fishing vacation near the Alaska community of Homer on the state’s south coast...Spokeswoman Megan Peters said the accident occurred on the Sterling highway, about five miles south of Soldotna.</p>