Will North Dakota Oil Cause Electricity and Food Shortages?

Conservatives love to hate renewable energy like wind and solar because it's "unreliable." The sun don't shine at night, and when the wind ain't blowin' you ain't gettin' no 'lectricity.

But they love coal because there's so much of it, liberals hate it, and it's sooo reliable. Except when it isn't: Minnesota may not have the coal it needs to generate enough electricity this winter.

North Dakota oil trains are causing shortages of coal, grain and fertilizer.

Turns out that, because of the fracking boom, trains are unable to deliver coal from western states to power plants in Minnesota:

[Power companies] blame persistent delivery problems at BNSF Railway, the major hauler of western coal burned in the Midwest. The railroad has struggled for a year to deliver traditional commodities like coal, fertilizer and grain while hauling increasing amounts of North Dakota crude oil.

These oil trains also cause days-long delays for Amtrak service, as well as interrupting commuter rail service in the Twin Cities and Chicago.  Frack sand shipments have caused similar delays in Wisconsin.

Last winter oil trains hammered the profitability of food companies due to delayed grain shipments:

General Mills, the Minnesota-based maker of Cheerios, told investors in March that it had lost 62 days of production — as much as 4 percent of its output — in the quarter that ended in February because of winter logistics problems, including rail-car congestion. In its earnings report this month, Cargill, another Minnesota-based food giant, reported a drop in net earnings that it attributed in part to “higher costs related to rail-car shortages.”

North Dakota oil is disrupting the electrical grid, rail travel, food production, and all phases of agriculture. The oil trains are also dangerous, having exploded several times in the last few years, killing 47 people. Yet the rail and oil companies are fighting proposed safety rules tooth and nail:

Railcars makers have said they don't have enough steel on hand or skilled labor such as welders to tackle rebuilding and retooling the entire hazardous-liquids tanker fleet any faster, said Jack Gerard, president of the energy-industry group. Oil producers and refiners have come to rely on moving crude by rail, he said Tuesday, the final day for comment on the proposed regulations.

Requiring new cars too quickly could stifle the North American energy boom, he said. "Overreacting creates more challenges than safety." 

North Dakota frackers waste $1.2 billion a year flaring off natural gas.

Even worse, fracking operations in North Dakota don't have natural gas pipelines for their methane, and are simply flaring off excess methane from their wells, wasting more than a billion dollars a year!

If the shale oil bubble continues and the price of oil stays low, North Dakota crude won't be profitable. Now would be the perfect time to step back and fix the industry's many problems and alleviate the oversupply that's undermining their profitability.

Why are these oil men in such a hurry to lose their shirts and waste irreplaceable natural resources?