Month: April 2016

In lean times for oil industry, salespeople bear down

Joe Zayden, the Bakken region operations manager for Flow Data, had a booth Thursday, April 15, 2016, at the Bakken Oil Product & Service Show at the West River Ice Center in Dickinson. He said his company is weathering the slowdown by “basically just trying to maintain what we have.” Dustin Monke / Forum News Service
Joe Zayden, the Bakken region operations manager for Flow Data, had a booth Thursday, April 15, 2016, at the Bakken Oil Product & Service Show at the West River Ice Center in Dickinson. He said his company is weathering the slowdown by “basically just trying to maintain what we have.” Dustin Monke / Forum News Service

Charnel Zetsch came to Dickinson State University on a softball scholarship seven years ago.

She arrived in the early days of the oil boom and eventually found herself working in the energy industry.

Today, she’s a district sales manager for Magid Glove & Safety and is among several industry salespeople who are asking questions like this: “Why are you paying for a $10 glove when you could be buying a $2 glove?”

After all, with oil prices hovering around $40 a barrel at best, these truly are lean times in the North Dakota energy industry.

That point was drilled home at the Bakken Oil Product & Service Show this week in Dickinson. The trade show drew far fewer exhibitors than it did last year and, aside from some peak traffic moments, was considerably slower — just like the western North Dakota oil and gas industry.

Zetsch, who didn’t have an exhibit at the show, spent much of Thursday walking the West River Ice Center interacting with other oilfield industry salespeople to get a sense of how their businesses are doing.

“It’s tough right now,” she said. “We’re all kind of feeling this pressure. I think what most people are doing right now is really just ramping up and going back and looking at standard operational procedures. Whether it be inventory or the service side of things, they’re really trying to figure out where they were shorthanded and where they were super heavy-handed and try to balance the two.”

Tim Liston, who works in business development for Industrial Measurement and Control, said his company is looking at alternative ways to increase business. He said he made some good leads at the show and his booth drew attention because his company showed off its customized lease automatic custody transfer unit — a device that accurately measures oil.

As expected, Liston said business on the oil and gas production side has dropped off considerably. However, he said midstream companies — those who work with pipelines, refining or trucking — “are still spending money.”

“We’re looking for companies who still have project money available and they’re still going ahead with projects,” Liston said. “… That’s where I’m spending my time.”

The same was true for Winters Instruments sales representative Peter Chronis, who stood behind a table stocked with pressure gauges of all sizes and tried to make some connections.

The company, which has nine offices around the world, sells pressure instruments on every end of the oil production process. But, because the production is slower than a year ago, Chronis said he’s taking the opportunity to “lock in” to current customers who are still spending money, just not as much as they did during the boom years.

“It’s a double-edged sword, depending on which side of the market share pendulum you’re covering,” he said.

Joe Zayden spent two days at the trade show and called it “the slowest one I’ve been to in a couple years now.”

Zayden is the Bakken region operations manager for Flow Data, a Colorado-based company that manufactures and engineers products for wellhead automation. Though oil production in North Dakota hasn’t dropped off much in spite of the drilling drawback, Zayden said his company is weathering the slowdown by “basically just trying to maintain what we have.”

Zayden said his company is positioned well enough to pick up business from smaller wellhead service companies that are folding in the wake of the drop in oil prices.

And like most of the oil industry workers at the show, he remained confident that business will eventually pick up.

“We ain’t going anywhere,” Zayden said. “We’re not shutting down. We’re staying here.”

Residents dealing with repercussions of income tax identity theft

Stacey Buckman has her financial ducks in a row.

She’s a small business owner, does her own taxes, regularly checks her credit report and knows how the ins and outs of the Internal Revenue Service’s 1040 form.

So, she knew something wasn’t right when she filed her taxes online March 30 and almost immediately received an email stating they’d already been filed just hours earlier.

It didn’t take long for Buckman to discover an identity thief had used both her and her husband’s Social Security numbers to file fraudulent income tax returns in their names, costing the IRS thousands of dollars and essentially putting the Buckmans on financial alert for the foreseeable future.

“It can happen to anyone,” Buckman said. “You have no idea. It’s so random.”

Buckman and others who have reported income tax identity theft in southwest North Dakota are part of an increasing statistic, North Dakota Tax Commissioner Ryan Rauschenberger said.

Rauschenberger said in 2015 his office caught nearly 1,000 instances of income tax identity theft, which would have totaled to nearly $1.3 million in fraudulent refunds.

“It’s a major issue for our state and for many, many other states,” Rauschenberger said, adding this type of identity theft is on the rise.

He said North Dakota is part of a consortium of states that have organized in an effort to stop this type of fraud.

The U.S. General Accountability Office estimated that in 2013, the IRS paid $5.8 billion in fraudulent refunds because of identity theft, with more fraudulent payments likely going undetected or unreported.

Anthony Willer, of Dickinson, said he received a letter from Rauschenberger’s office last Saturday requesting verification of the W-2 forms used in filing his family’s taxes before he had even filed.

Like Buckman, Willer said he planned to file his taxes later than normal this year because he had been waiting to receive various tax forms.

“Something wasn’t matching up with the system as far as the tax amounts that were paid,” Willer said.

He said the tax commissioner’s office flagging his filings as affected by fraud helped him report the identity theft. Still, Willer said he spent an entire day making sure his family’s identities, as well as their finances and credit history, were secure.

“It’s a huge inconvenience,” he said.

Rauschenberger said it’s also important to report identity theft to the state attorney general’s office consumer protection department.

Buckman and Willer each reported their identity theft to area law enforcement, as a police report is a required part of clearing a person’s name after their identity has been stolen or compromised, Dickinson Police Capt. David Wilkie said. That police report then shows up on a person’s credit history for seven years, with it serving as a note to future creditors and to help keep their credit scores unaffected by the fraud.

Wilkie said it seems that random people are being targeted for income tax identity theft.

“It’s tough to say how they’re picking their victims,” Wilkie said. “If we knew that, it would make it a lot easier to warn people. It kind of seems like age has something to do with it. Although I have heard of young people getting their identities stolen too.”

Most of the incidents occur late in the tax season, Rauschenberger said.

Monday is the deadline for Americans to file their taxes.

“The key is you should file early,” he said. “Don’t wait until the last minute. That’s one of the major reasons we push that you should file early.”

Buckman said she typically files her family’s taxes in February or early March. She also always files with her husband, David, as head of the household. She learned that the identity thief had filed using her as the head of the household instead, which became an automatic red flag for the IRS.

How their Social Security numbers were compromised, however, remains a mystery.

“There’s really no way of knowing,” Buckman said. “In speaking with TurboTax, the IRS and law enforcement, they’re saying that in a majority of these cases, it’s being done by someone overseas.”

Like Buckman, Willer said he’s knowledgeable about taxes and never expected his identity to be stolen through his filings.

“You think it’s something that takes place somewhere else. Not in Dickinson. Not in a small area,” Willer said. “It’s quite common unfortunately. Too common.”

As they move forward, both Buckman and Willer said they’re going to stay vigilant with their finances and check their credit reports and bank accounts often. Buckman said she may even go as far as attempting to request a new Social Security number to prevent future identity theft.

“My biggest takeaway from this is to make sure I file early,” Buckman said. “File as early as absolutely possible to prevent someone else from having the opportunity to compromise you and put you in a bad situation. Because God knows where this really will end?”

Planting season well underway, though farmers hope precipitation is in future

MOTT — After 23 years of farming, Mark Anderson is happy to stick to his “game plan.”

The Regent-area farmer said neither below-average precipitation nor low commodity prices have shaken him much this year. He’s still seeding the crops he’d planned for and said Monday that he’s more than halfway finished.

Though with much of western North Dakota in a moderately dry drought, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s drought monitor, Anderson and others say they can’t help but hope for a little rain soon.

“It’d be nice to get a good rain to settle the dust,” he said. “I think everybody would have kind of a weight lifted off their shoulders if they’d get an inch of rain.”

Most southwest North Dakota farmers are in the same boat as Anderson — about half done with their spring planting while hoping for some moisture to give those seeded crops an early boost.

Garret Swindler, who farms east of Anderson in the Mott area, said the only benefit to the dry year so far is farmers were fighting wet and muddy fields just to get their crops seeded last spring.

He said the moisture left in the topsoil after winter is fine for seeding, but it’ll only be good if planting season if followed by some rain.

“There’s enough moisture there to get the crops started,” he said. “We’re definitely planting deep. … We just have to make sure that seed has enough moisture to germinate and get out of the ground. But you can’t really wait on rain either.”

Duaine Marxen, the Hettinger County Extension agent in Mott, said most farmers he works and speaks with on a regular basis have been in the field for the past couple of weeks, and like Anderson and Swindler, most are well on their way to wrapping up planting efforts. Contending with dry conditions and high winds, however, have made for some challenging days, he said.

“No one here will complain if it starts raining,” Marxen said with a laugh.

Farmers might get their wish this weekend.

The National Weather Service is forecasting some showers for southwest North Dakota this week, with chances increasing toward the weekend and into next week.

That could be a welcome relief, as Todd Hamilton, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Bismarck, said the Dickinson area is already 1 inch below average rainfall for the year.

“We haven’t really had any real significant precipitation in quite some time,” Hamilton said, adding it has been about six months since southwest North Dakota experienced a large precipitation event.

He said conditions are “abnormally dry” throughout the western and central parts of the state.

“We are still early in the growing season now, so there’s certainly potential for us to move out of this,” he said.

Anderson said he has wrapped up seeding his spring wheat and Swindler planned to be finished with it by today. After that, both said they’d move on to other crops such as flax, canola and corn.

Anderson said while some farmers might be trying to “outguess” the weather or the future of commodity prices in deciding what or where they plant certain crops, he’s happy to stay the course and stick to what has worked for more than two decades.

“What looks poor now may be your best moneymaker in the end,” he said. “… I’ve been through these times before. You just seed the crop and cross your fingers.”

Gift to sportsmen: Longtime teacher donates 1,120 acres of family land to Game and Fish to establish Wildlife Management Area

 

LEFOR — Tucked away a few miles west of the Enchanted Highway south of Gladstone is a large and secluded tract of land where pheasants pop out of thick grassland and deer hide in tree rows that stretch for nearly a half-mile.

It’s an area soon to become Stark County’s first North Dakota Game & Fish Department Wildlife Management Area.

The 1,120 acres of land–which consists of an adjoining section, half-section and quarter-section–was gifted to the Game and Fish Department by Regina Roth, a longtime teacher and lover of wildlife who died in January.

“I wish I would have known her because I don’t know why she did it,” said Casey Anderson, the Game & Fish Department’s assistant wildlife division chief.

Anderson said one of Roth’s wishes is certain, however. It’s that she wanted to ensure the WMA was named after her parents, Adam and Theresa Raab, who homesteaded the area. Anderson said Game & Fish will be honoring that wish.

Game & Fish has yet to complete the land acquisition process and Anderson said it may take a couple years before the WMA is complete.

The department must fence the entire area, place proper signage and rework agreements with a local farmer who leases the roughly 450 acres of cropland within the future WMA.

“We’ll get boundary fences and stuff up as soon as we can. That’s kind of the first order of business,” Anderson said. “When we were talking about doing habitat work and stuff like that, the fact that there’s an ag lease that we’re going to uphold is OK. Because there’s some things that have to be done on it before we start worrying about habitat work.”

Anderson said the boundary fencing will be up by this fall’s pheasant hunting season.

“There’s going to be all kinds of opportunities down there, as far as hunting opportunities,” he said.

The original Raab farmstead–an idyllic western North Dakota farm setting–is also part of the land donation. It’s surrounded on the north, south and east sides by hundreds of Ponderosa pine trees and Evergreens, and there are some other outbuildings.

“She had some wishes that we try to maintain that farmstead,” Anderson said, adding that Game & Fish is still checking into what it’s legally allowed to do with the farm and house on it. “We’re not necessarily in the business of having living quarters, but we’d sure like to maintain her wishes.”

Norma Hirning, whose husband Roger farms the land inside what will become the WMA, said the entire Raab family–including Regina and her brother Irving–were animal lovers who cared deeply for their land.

“The entire time I’ve known those people, they’ve had a real love for animals. Whether it’s wildlife or cattle, whatever,” Hirning said.

Though Hirning said Roth was a very private person, she touched countless lives as a teacher.

After graduating from Lefor High School, Roth began teaching at a country school nearby before even obtaining her degree from what was then Dickinson State Teacher’s College. She ended up teaching first and second grades in Mott, where she also became the elementary principal, until her retirement.

There are 215 Wildlife Management Areas throughout North Dakota either managed or partially managed by Game & Fish. The WMAs are open to hunting, fishing and trapping, and are also used for hiking, primitive camping and nature study, according to the department’s website.

Of those WMAs, only around 30 are larger than the Raab Wildlife Management Area, and many of those in western North Dakota are near Lake Sakakawea and Lake Oahe.

“This is a huge gift to the sportsmen and women of North Dakota,” Anderson said. “It’s going to open a lot of opportunities for locals that need a place to hunt.”

When Anderson presented information about the WMA to the Stark County Commission last Tuesday, Commissioner Ken Zander figured the land could have brought more than $1 million on the open market.

“When you look around, there’s not too many of us–myself included–who would have thought of doing something like this before we or I would have cashed in, and taken the money and run,” he said. “It’s a beautiful gesture.”

Stark County Courthouse Renovation Moves Forward

The Stark County Commission moved closer Tuesday to finalizing design plans for the Stark County Courthouse renovation and addition that’ll begin this summer, and discussed taking additional public input on the project before construction begins.

Rob Remark, the project leader for JLG Architects in Dickinson, asked for the commission’s approval during its regular monthly meeting at the courthouse to move forward on the design

The committee will do a virtual “walk through” of the project Thursday as a member of the public, as a county worker and as a sheriff’s offi ce employee escorting a detainee to the courtroom. They’ll also discuss specifi c materials that could be used in the project both on the exterior and interior.

Continue reading “Stark County Courthouse Renovation Moves Forward”