Early Bakken bets position rail shippers for export rush

WALTHAM, Massachusetts (Bloomberg) -- When Eric Slifka landed in North Dakota’s Bakken shale field three years ago, he says he was overcome by “this feeling of a lot of growth. You could feel the pressure.” The fervor was so strong that Slifka, CEO of Global Partners LP in Waltham, Massachusetts, decided in that single trip to carry Bakken crude on railcars that his company had been using to haul ethanol to New York. His first full trains started a wave of deliveries that rescued East Coast refiners from the brink of closing amid the rising cost of oil imported from Africa and the North Sea.

..»