Category: Business
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NFIB: Finding Help Still Big Problem
Finding help continues to be a huge problem for the nation’s small businesses, according to the latest Jobs Report put out monthly by the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), the nation’s leading association of Main Street enterprises. “Our Jobs Report is a national snapshot, not broken down by state,” said Ronda Wiggers, state director…
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Energy Determines How Well You Live
By Evelyn Pyburn “How to Make America Competitive” according to Leen Weijers requires nothing more than lowering the cost of oil – the cost of competitiveness – and fracking has done that. Weijers, as the featured speaker at the Montana Petroleum Association’s Appreciation Luncheon, explained how improved technology and efficiencies in the industry has lowered…
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Americans Think Increased Manufacturing Employment Would Be Good for the Country but Not for Themselves
By Colin Grabow, Cato Today One of the more intriguing results of a recent Cato Institute–commissioned poll about trade and globalization was the respondents’ views on manufacturing. When asked whether the country would be better off if more Americans worked in the sector, 80 percent responded in the affirmative. Given widespread perceptions of American industrial…
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Americans Love to Work, More than Most
Americans are hard workers, putting in an average of 1,799 hours per year, according to the World Economic Forum. That’s 456 hours per year more than Germans work, but 408 fewer than Mexicans do, for example. Even when given the chance to not work as hard, many Americans won’t, as only 48% of workers use all of their…
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Nuclear Energy Takes Center Stage
Perusing many news articles and many business reports it appears that the issue of moving to nuclear as a future energy generator is a dominant consideration across the country as energy leaders worry about meeting the nation’s future demand for energy. The issue is also emerging as a strong consideration in Montana. According to the…
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NWE will Acquire Another Segment of Colstrip Plant
Effective Jan. 1, 2026, NorthWestern Energy will acquire, at no cost, Puget Sound Energy’s 370 megawatt share of the Colstrip Plant. The acquisition will allow NWE to leverage existing infrastructure that is “well established, dependable, reliable and consistently available when our customers need energy the most”. An equivalent resource would cost more than $700 million…
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Hard Look at Energy and Future of Colstrip
By Evelyn Pyburn The community of Colstrip is enthusiastic about NorthWestern Energy assuming ownership of the interests in the Colstrip plants held by Puget Sound and Avista. Especially about the fact that the company will hold 55 percent ownership of the power generating facility, which many in the community believe spells a bright future for…
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Electric Grid Gets $700 million to Fuel Expansion to Serve MT & ND
The Department of Energy is adding $700 million to a $3.6 billion project that will boost the electrical energy supply for North Dakota and Montana. The funding from DOE’s Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships Program will go toward a 3,000-megawatt High-Voltage Direct Current Voltage Source Converter transmission line from Center, N.D., to Colstrip, Montana —…
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Generating Station Completed
By Evelyn Pyburn Although NorthWestern Energy’s Yellowstone County Generating Station is going through final performance testing, it is in full operation and serving customers. A group of media folks were given a tour last week, accompanied by several company representatives, including Josh Follman, the generating station’s project manager and Director of Project Development for NorthWestern…
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NFIB Asks for Faster Action on Two Issues
The most recent release of NFIB’s monthly Small Business Economic Trends report didn’t vary much from previous dismal ones, but it did reveal a more troubling finding that prompted the Montana state director for the association that publishes it to call on the state’s Congressional delegation to act faster on two issues that would help…