Land Management

Geo-Buffett — Burlington Northern Sante Fe

Have you seen the map of the BNSF sys­tem? I’ve been think­ing about War­ren Buf­fett all day and his pur­chase of the BNSF Rail­way. This is a bold move, although not out of line with most of what he has been talk­ing about the last few years in terms of energy effi­ciency, trans­port and the cycle of devel­op­ment. Do you think Buf­fett would buy a rail­road that did not have a rail car­bon cal­cu­la­tor — prob­a­bly not!

Trains move more freight at lower cost than any other means. That is energy effi­ciency. When energy prices rise, freight and inter-modal ser­vices have major advan­tages. If your rail­road gen­er­ates elec­tric­ity in rural areas (where trains go) — then maybe elec­tricty will become the energy source for loco­mo­tives. Europe does it, why not North America?

Cana­dian National rail­way cov­ers a wide area of Canada and into the U.S. and both of these rail­roads together would be a for­mi­da­ble link­age, but BNSF is par­tic­u­larly interesting.

BNSF stands to ben­e­fit as a con­ver­gence hap­pens. Fuel prices will rise undoubt­edly, but that cou­pled with the large amount of goods that will surge into rail cars as the econ­omy in North Amer­ica picks up, could pro­vide extended benefits.

From a geospa­tial per­spec­tive a period of rein­vest­ment into rail seems pos­si­ble, with high speed rail also included. New con­trols, topo­graphic data resources, the move of com­mu­ni­ties toward sources of power (solar, wind, geot­her­mal) all seem to point to rural devel­op­ment. It is inter­est­ing that Buf­fett has invested in rail to this degree, par­tic­u­larly since he tends to be a longer term investor — that in itself is tell­tale I think.

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