Bakken – Page 4 – Dustin Monke

Home prices fall in Dickinson, but not much

Buying a home in Dickinson is cheaper and less stressful than it was only a year ago, two of the city’s top Realtors said Friday.

Though the oil industry slowdown around Dickinson has led to lower average sale prices and more homes in the city being listed for sale, the overall residential housing market has remained strong and may be beginning to stabilize.

“They (prices) have definitely softened and buyers are now more cautious, so there’s more on the market,” said Ninetta Wandler, a longtime Dickinson Realtor. “But they’re not forced to buy yesterday. Before, if you had three houses to look at, you were lucky — and you didn’t have time to think about it.”

Compared to last year, there’s much more time for prospective homebuyers to think about a home purchase and to negotiate the price.

The average year-to-date sale price for residential property has fallen nearly 10 percent — from about $294,000 to $266,000 — according to the Badlands Board of Realtors’ market summary report for June.

Still, more than 84 percent of active listings last month were for homes priced above $200,000 — a decrease of only about 3 percent from last year — while more than half of the homes on the market at the end of June were listed between $250,000 to $400,000.

Don Paulson is trying to sell one of those homes in north Dickinson.

“I just want to downsize,” he said.

He may not have to wait long to do so.
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Study shows Bakken natural gas flare satellite images aren't accurate

Satellite images that circulated the Internet more than two years ago purported to show natural gas flares lighting up the Bakken Oil Patch as bright as a major metropolitan city were “highly processed,” “manipulated” and “inaccurate,” researchers at the University of North Dakota’s Energy & Environmental Research Center said Wednesday.

Chris Zygarlicke, the EERC’s deputy associate director for research, said he took an interest in the images because the science involved aligns closely with his background. He said having driven through western North Dakota and the Oil Patch, he believed the images were inaccurately portraying the area.

“There’s no way that we’re lighting up the land like you see people talking about everywhere,” he said.

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Dickinson refinery begins producing fuel from Bakken crude oil

Dakota Prairie Refining plant manager Dave Podratz, left, and MDU Resources public relations manager Tim Rasmussen stand outside the gates of the Dickinson, N.D., refinery on Monday after it started producing its first diesel fuel. (Dustin Monke / The Dickinson Press)

RURAL DICKINSON — Dave Podratz, still wearing his hard hat, safety glasses and coveralls, walked into a conference room at Dakota Prairie Refining’s main office building Monday afternoon and sat a small glass jar containing clear liquid on the table.

The jar is soon to become a keepsake. It contains some of the first diesel fuel created from Bakken crude oil at the refinery facility west of Dickinson.

After more than two years of construction and testing, the approximately $425 million refinery — the first greenfield refinery built in the United States since 1976 — began making product over the weekend and is now storing it in preparation for sale.

“It’s been a long process,” said Podratz, the refinery’s plant manager.

Construction on the facility, which is jointly owned and operated by MDU Resources Group and Calumet Specialty Products Partners, began March 26, 2013, with a groundbreaking at the 318-acre site about four miles west of Dickinson.

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Dickinson businesses begin feeling slowdown's effect: Drop in oil prices has led to fewer customers, better employees

Todd Anderson, service manager at T-Rex Conoco in Dickinson, talks to customer Bobby Metz, who came into the shop Wednesday while looking for an oil change. Anderson said business has slowed down along with the drop in oil prices, but said he's somewhat happy to have a reprieve from the chaos of the boom. (Dustin Monke / The Dickinson Press) — Todd Anderson, service manager at T-Rex Conoco in Dickinson, talks to customer Bobby Metz, who came into the shop Wednesday while looking for an oil change. Anderson said business has slowed down along with the drop in oil prices, but said he’s somewhat happy to have a reprieve from the chaos of the boom. (Dustin Monke / The Dickinson Press)

Steve Keinzle noticed a change around the first of the year.

The manager of Mac’s Hardware in north Dickinson said his business catered to many oilfield service companies, both big and small — mostly hot-shot crews and roustabout companies — that would come in and buy everything from tools to flame-retardant gear for employees.

But when the oil prices dropped out, so did much of that business.

“Their budgets went away real fast,” Keinzle said. “And, of course, we felt that effect right away. The traffic is down.”

Many business owners and managers in Dickinson say they’re feeling the effects of the drop in oil prices as much as anyone else. For some businesses, traffic and profits are down. Others report steady customer flow not all that different from a year ago, when oil drilling in western North Dakota was at an all-time high — particularly around Dickinson.
Some say it isn’t all bad. They say they’re happy to have more time to work on projects, improve infrastructure and think ahead instead of worrying about the challenges the oil boom brought them over the past few years.

“It’s a nice reprieve to be able to slow down a little and catch a breath, because once things get going again, (business) will pick up,” said Todd Anderson, service manager at T-Rex Conoco off Third Avenue West in north Dickinson.

Anderson said he’s noticed a definite slowdown in work. Now his crew has time to take walk-in oil changes or fix vehicles without work being scheduled weeks in advance.

“I’d say equivalent to before the oil came,” he said.

On the other side of the building, T-Rex convenience store manager Vicki Nogosek said she is ordering less product than she did in 2014.

“You notice pretty much all day that it has slowed down a lot, just in gas and everything,” Nogosek said.

However, she said there is some good that has come with the slowdown in business.

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Company touts new way to eliminate H2S

Tom Wilson, left, and his brother-in-law Dan Johnson, both of Buffalo, S.D., have manufactured a device that removes hydrogen sulfide, commonly known as the deadly gas H2S, from crude oil. They were at the Bakken Oil Product and Service Show on April 15 at the West River Ice Center in Dickinson, N.D., during the third week of April to tout their device and talk with others about its potential. (Dustin Monke / The Dickinson Press)

An oilfield veteran and a retired schoolteacher believe they have found a method of removing deadly hydrogen sulfide gas from crude oil at wellsites without using chemicals in the process.

Dan Johnson and Tom Wilson, brothers-in-law from Buffalo, S.D., and cofounders of Blue Bull Lamont, gave a short presentation April 15 at the Bakken Oil and Product Show in Dickinson about their machinery and methods they say have been proven to eliminate the gas commonly known as H2S.

The new company — which is funded by and shares a name with Aberdeen, S.D.-based venture capital and private equity firm Lamont Enterprises — has patented a 40-feet-by-8-feet mobile processing unit that was fabricated in Johnson’s Dickinson shop and has been proven by independent oil-testing laboratories to work at wellsites in the Bakken.

“We dreamed it up, we proved it, we patented it,” Wilson said.

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