MBI Energy Services – Dustin Monke

MBI Energy Services CEO and founder Jim Arthaud stands by one of his trucks on Oct. 8, 2015, at his company’s Belfield headquarters. (Dustin Monke / The Dickinson Press)

Jim Arthaud doesn’t look like a man at the helm of a multimillion-dollar oilfield services company.

Wearing a T-shirt and baseball cap with blue jeans, he sits in the office of his senior vice president and watches The Weather Channel while discussing the price of oil.

“Oil’s up today,” he says with a smile. “It’s about at $50. It’s only got $50 to go.”

The 60-year-old CEO and founder of MBI Energy Services follows that statement with a smile and laughter, knowing all too well the price for a barrel of crude oil isn’t doubling anytime soon.

That Arthaud can joke about the price of oil is a telling sign that not all is doom and gloom in the western North Dakota oilfields — at least not yet. Still, following eight years of substantial growth tied directly to the Bakken oil boom, Arthaud looks back on the past 10 months — a unique type of oil bust, as he puts it — and knows he should have seen these days coming.

“I’d say it surprised a lot of people and it surprised me,” he said. “It was definitely a dramatic downturn that a lot of people didn’t see. Obviously, the writing was on the wall. We all should have seen it.”

Continue reading “Building through the bust: Southwest ND oilfield service company leaders say they’re using 2015 slowdown to improve their businesses”

BELFIELD — Troy Ohlhausen never lets the needle on his pickup’s speedometer go beyond 10 mph when he’s on an oilfield site — even if the site where he’s driving is nothing more than a simulation.

As Ohlhausen drove slow and steady around MBI Energy Services’ training facility Thursday, he pointed out truck drivers training to haul crude oil by first spending time in classrooms, tank batteries set up to show employees proper safety techniques, and even one trucker undergoing a quality control check on how to properly put chains on his truck’s tires.

“You can do training out in live operations, but it’s so fast,” said Ohlhausen, MBI’s director of training. “Everything is fast-paced. We slow it down out here.”

Continue reading “Safety first: MBI offers unique training program — slowly”