Tag: News

Whiting CEO: We believe in the Bakken

Volker says oil companies still profiting despite lower oil prices

BISMARCK — The chief executive of North Dakota’s largest oil producer said Wednesday that his company is still making big money on Bakken and Three Forks wells despite the industry’s economic downturn.

Whiting Petroleum Corp. President and CEO Jim Volker said during the second day of the Williston Basin Petroleum Conference that he foresees a gradual upturn for the state’s oil industry as crude prices steadily creep upward and more drilled but uncompleted wells are slowly brought into production.

“We’re a big believer in the Bakken, not only its future but even where we are today,” Volker said. “This is why we believe so much in the Bakken. We put our money where our mouth is here.”

Volker pointed to technological improvements for allowing production companies to operate with fewer rigs, allowing them to continue investing in the North Dakota Oil Patch — even if it’s not at the same rapid pace as years prior.

Volker said even at Wednesday’s price of about $50 a barrel — a comment that drew applause from the crowd — a Whiting well is still projected to produce a future net revenue of $27 million at a cost of about $7 million.

Whiting produced more than 4.1 million barrels of crude from nearly 1,500 active North Dakota wells in January 2016. In Stark County, the company had 131 wells that produced around 180,000 barrels.

“This is all happening with improvements in technology and improvements in the way we drill and complete,” Volker said. “Not only are we cleaner, we’re more efficient and we’re doing it for less money.”

Don Hrap, president of the Lower 48 states for ConocoPhillips, echoed that in his keynote address later in the day, as he said innovation and entrepreneurialism created out of necessity by the 2015-16 oil price downturn will make the industry “smarter, better and more efficient.”

“I think that technology innovation is what brought us this renaissance and also it’s what’s going to support us as we move forward,” Hrap said.

Hrap showed charts detailing the ups and downs of oil over the past 150 years, and said while this recent price drop is one of the most sustained in history, it could lead to more level and sustainable long-term prices.

“As we adapt and adjust, we have a tendency to provide the supply that’s needed that kind of moves us to a lower price,” he said. “That’s important to us, because it says we can’t count on $100 oil. We need an industry that’s supportive of a price that’s more moderate.”

Volker, meanwhile, wrapped up his speech with a summary of how Whiting recently paid down $500 million in debt.

Paul Steffes, CEO of Steffes Corp., a Dickinson manufacturing firm heavily invested in the production side of the oil business, said hearing that “certainly makes me feel good.”

“They’re a major player in the Bakken, so it’s an important piece for North Dakota to see Whiting be healthy,” Steffes said.

Lynn Helms, director of the state Department of Mineral Resources, said Volker’s optimism about pushing forward with a slow ramp-up is “consistent with what all the other operators are saying.”

Volker pointed out Whiting’s obligation to continue drilling wells, especially those on federal and tribal land, or risk losing their leases. Helms said those comments prove that rigs will continue to operate in the state, even if there’s only around 30. North Dakota had 28 drilling rigs as of Tuesday.

“I think that’s going to help the state to stay in this 30-rig paradigm that we’re in, because those drilling obligations are really expensive to walk away from,” Helms said.

Keystone XL denial affected Dakota Access Pipeline strategy, executive says

BISMARCK — The denial of the Keystone XL pipeline affected how the company building the Dakota Access Pipeline executed its strategy, one of its engineering executives said Tuesday at the Williston Basin Petroleum Conference.

Joey Mahmoud, the senior vice president of engineering for Energy Transfer Partners, said the $3.78 billion pipeline project now in the early stages of being built emphasized using labor unions and avoiding federal lands as the company watched Keystone XL fail to get built.

Mahmoud said 96 percent of the 1,168-mile, 450,000-barrel-a-day crude oil pipeline’s route from Stanley, N.D., to Patoka, Ill., is set and the project should be completed by the end of 2016. However, about 50 miles of the pipeline’s proposed route in Iowa are still awaiting approval and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers still needs to approve river crossings.

“Developing a project of this magnitude in this economy, under this administration, has been very difficult,” Mahmoud said.

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Free kids books are back: Imagination Library program restarts in Stark County

Jessina Kary said she wasn’t sure what had happened when her son, Isaac, stopped receiving his monthly book through the mail from the Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library program.

She wondered if there had been a mixup in her address after her family had moved. It wasn’t until later that Kary and hundreds of others learned the program had lost its funding in Dickinson, leaving nearly 600 children ages 5 and under without the free book they’d come to expect and enjoy every month.

“He loved it,” Kary said of 4-year-old Isaac. “The first book he ever got was ‘Little Engine That Could’ and we still love that one because he still loves trains.”

Soon, Isaac Kary and kids across Stark County will start receiving their Imagination Library books again.

North Dakota First Lady Betsy Dalrymple helped announce the restart of the program Monday morning at the Dickinson Area Public Library and later read “Roar of a Snore” to a group of children.

“There’s nothing better that a community can do than to help give a gift to your children once a month,” Dalrymple said.

The Imagination Library program was brought back in large part because of a donation of $16,000 by WPX Energy, an oil and gas exploration company with a large stake in the Bakken. Their donation allows children in all Stark County cities except Belfield, which has its own Imagination Library program, the opportunity to sign up for the Imagination Library.

“I really want to tip my hat to them (WPX) for underlining the difference that this program can make in the lives of children,” Dalrymple said.

Imagination Library was launched in 1995 by Dolly Parton, a country music legend and actress, to benefit children ages 5 and under in her home state of Tennessee. It has since expanded to every state, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom. Each month, children receive an age-appropriate book through the mail.

When Dickinson’s Imagination Library lost its funding, several interested parents and educators formed a committee to bring it back. With Dalrymple’s help and support from WPX, the program relaunched in April.

“There’s such a great need for this, so I’m glad we were able to get a committee together and get this going again,” said Lane Talkington, Dickinson’s children’s services librarian

Nearly 1,400 children in Stark County are eligible for the program, and the committee hopes to get every one of them signed up.

Chelsey Scherr, representing the Badlands Reading Council, works for the K.I.D.S. Program in Dickinson and said she sees the difference in children who are read to early and often in a world full of screens.

“What they really need is a parent who gets on the floor, plays with them and reads to them,” Scherr said.

Erica Crespo, part of the committee to help restart the Imagination Library in Stark County, held her 1-year-old son Vaile as they listed to Dalrymple and others speak.

She said she was disappointed when the program lost its funding around the time Vaile was born. Now that it’s back, they are signed up and awaiting his first book.

“It’s just an awesome program to promote literacy in our community,” Crespo said. “So many parents don’t know about this program.”

 

Theodore Roosevelt National Park gears up for a busy year

MEDORA — Theodore Roosevelt National Park’s top official believes it could be a big year for the western North Dakota people’s playground.

Planning is already underway for the National Park Service’s yearlong centennial celebration, and Park Superintendent Wendy Ross said TRNP is anticipating a sizable boost in visitors thanks to both centennial events and North Dakota Tourism’s nationwide marketing push that highlights the park.

“The centennial is just big,” Ross said.

The publicity push, featuring actor and Minot native Josh Duhamel, includes TV commercials filmed in the park’s South Unit near Medora last summer that are now beginning to air nationally.

“I’m very optimistic,” Ross said. “I think our summer is going to be amazing.”

Boosting visitors

Ross became acting superintendent in November 2014 following Valerie Naylor’s retirement. The “acting” label was dropped last July and she moved into the role permanently.

Her goal is to capture a larger audience and get visitors to the park who may have never been there, or even heard of it, before.

TRNP’s 2015 attendance figures show it had more than 586,000 counted visitors — an increase of about 26,000 people from 2014. However, Ross said those numbers may not be entirely accurate after park officials discovered some of its people counters hadn’t been working for weeks at a time. That glitch has been fixed, she said.

“I’m really concerned about capturing what we get in terms of visitation this year,” Ross said.

Interestingly, Ross said the park is noticing a small demographic shift in who frequents the area.

“We’re just seeing more foreign visitors,” she said. “… We see people who don’t traditionally go to national parks. They’re curious about what it’s all about.”

Ross said she’s looking for opportunities for the park to become relevant to what she calls a “curious generation” beginning to travel more

“The generation that didn’t travel to national parks as children,” she said. “That’s really our opportunity now with all this promotion.”

Being ranked as the No. 5 place in the world to see in 2016 by The New York Times may play into that too, she said.

Ross said park officials worked with the Times’ staff for the piece, so they knew it was coming. But they didn’t realize the park would rank so high on the list, or be mentioned alongside some more exotic locations.

“It’s been great positive press,” she said. “You couldn’t ask for anything better than to be on that list.”

Oil and tourism

Ross said summer tourism now hops back into the front seat of North Dakota’s economy after low oil prices hurt the state’s energy industry. However, the byproduct of low oil prices is lower gas prices low, which benefits the park with both in-state and out-of-state visitors.

“When that starts decreasing, in terms of price, tourism comes up and we see that everywhere, in all national parks,” Ross said.

She said the park’s North Unit, about 15 miles south of still-booming Oil Patch hub Watford City — where the population has increased from 1,600 to around 7,000 in the past five years — has become the park’s “new front door.”

“There are all these countries represented in Watford City that were never there before,” Ross said. “It’s our chance to be relevant to a new generation and a new group of people, to think about that.”

There are challenges up north, however.

The park is working to replace its North Unit Visitors Center, which is currently a collection of portable buildings. But a replacement may be a couple years away from reality, Ross said, because of budgetary concerns. Still, she’s trying to make the North Unit more of a priority.

“It used to be a sleepy backwater, real wilderness experience,” Ross said.

TRMF’s involved in NPS centennial

The Theodore Roosevelt Medora Foundation plans to play a role in the National Park Service Centennial as well, said Justin Fisk, the foundation’s marketing director.

The foundation is sending Roosevelt impersonator Joe Wiegand away from Medora for the entire month of June to travel the country doing presentations and performances to raise awareness about the park.

The Medora Musical will also “very, very likely” have the centennial central to its daily performance, Fisk said.

“They’re writing the show right now and it’s looking cool, and they’re looking for the best way to include the National Park Service Centennial in that,” he said. “It’s pretty exciting.”

Fisk said over the next month, more centennial tie-ins and plans will be finalized between the park service and the foundation.

“With the partnership, you can actually get a lot more done,” Ross said. “You can use community members and partners to fill in some of the nuts-and-bolts gaps, but you can also create those meaningful ties your communities.”

Target Logistics to temporarily close Dunn County crew camp

MANNING — Target Logistics is temporarily closing its massive crew camp in southern Dunn County, the company said Wednesday.

Citing dwindling capacity and low oil prices, the company says plans to close the nearly 600-bed crew camp 8 miles north of Dickinson and reopen in late spring or early summer.

“The capacity is down, somewhat due to the oil situation and somewhat due to the weather,” said Randy Pruett with Pierpont Communications, which provides media relations for Target Logistics. “This is not uncommon throughout the crew camp industry.”

Pruett said he didn’t know exactly when the camp was closing, but said those staying there were being relocated to other Target Logistics properties in North Dakota.

The news was announced earlier in the day at the Dunn County Commission meeting.

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