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.
The only thing certain in this life is uncertainty.
Never was that more true than in southwest North Dakota in 2015.
We came into the year nervous about the state of the energy industry here as oil prices steadily dropped.
The commodity that had sparked so much growth, development and excitement in our little corner of the world all of a sudden wasn’t having such a great impact. Instead, everything seemed to hit pause, and oil companies began shuttering operations, taking down rigs and cutting workers by the dozen.
We now go into 2016 knowing it’s unlikely that the oil industry will soon return to the boom times that sparked and sustained our growth.
An oil well pumps on the outskirts of northwest Watford City on Oct. 14. Despite the decline in oil prices, a hectic way of life continues in many Oil Patch cities, though some city leaders say 2015 brought many changes
Leaders in western North Dakota’s Oil Patch cities say life didn’t change as abruptly as many expected it to in 2015 as crude prices bottomed out, oil rigs disappeared from the landscape, and oilfield workers packed up and left the area in droves.
As traffic slowed, crew camps closed and apartments emptied, Williston, Dickinson and Watford City continued to build infrastructure and work on long-term projects while keeping a close eye on the industry for even the slightest changes.
“As a city, we haven’t had a chance to take a breath yet,” Williston Mayor Howard Klug said. “We had $100 million worth of projects going on. We’re finally getting them all buttoned up.”
In McKenzie County, which produces more oil than any county in the state, Watford City Mayor Brent Sanford said “it’s really business as usual.” But, he said, challenges are neverending, despite the creation of what city and county leaders believe is a long-term industry through both oil and natural gas production jobs.
“People are still busy,” he said. “There’s not a lot of job loss in Watford City, comparatively, and there are still job openings. There are still employers who are still trying to figure out plans for hiring the right amount of employees and the right employees.”
Dickinson, meanwhile, has fallen back on its manufacturing industry to soften the blow of massive oilfield job loss after what City Administrator Shawn Kessel said after the city experienced multiple years of 10 percent growth.
“I think people really have to look the whole thing in perspective. … That stuff is really not sustainable in the long term,” he said. “What the downturn has done has allowed our manufacturers to take advantage of the economy. They had a hard time expanding because of such a low unemployment rate. They couldn’t find employees. Now they can. Rather than having expansions happen in other communities, they can now look at Dickinson again. I think that’s great. I’m really glad to see that. It further diversifies our economy. It makes us more resilient in managing the back side of the boom.”
Graphic courtesy of Timothy Nesheim, North Dakota Geological Survey
AMIDON — Hydraulic fracturing of the Tyler shale formation was expected to liven the sleepy plains of Slope County with oil activity.
But more than two years after the first well was spudded, three horizontal wells drilled by Marathon Oil Co. between September and December of 2013 have proven economically unfeasible and are now abandoned. A permit for a fourth well has been canceled.
The challenging geology of the play combined with the steep drop in oil prices kept Marathon from setting off another shale play in western North Dakota, said Timothy Nesheim, a subsurface geologist with the state Geological Survey.
Nesheim said the first two Tyler test wells “produced oil at rates too low to be economical at nearly any oil price.”
It’s a sharp change from September 2013, when Marathon estimated it could produce about 1.6 million barrels of oil equivalent from four test wells it had received permits to drill.
The wells produced 4,471 barrels of oil and 5.2 million cubic feet of natural gas, all of it coming from the Rundle Trust 29-21H and Powell 31-27TH wells, according to state Department of Mineral Resources Oil and Gas Division data.
Nesheim said the Rundle well — one of two drilled on a pad — had an initial 24-hour production rate of 88 barrels of oil per day and stabilized at just 7 bpd “for several months before it was plugged and abandoned.” By comparison, Bakken wells are producing an average of 117 barrels a day so far in 2015, according to Oil and Gas Division data.
Even at oil prices of $80 to $100 a barrel, the well’s production rate was about 5 to 10 percent of what it needed to be economical, he said.
“We had our hopes up. It looked good,” said Ken Urlacher, who farms and ranches on the Rundle land and takes care of the landowner’s cattle operation. “Obviously, if it didn’t look good, they wouldn’t have spent all the money in it and put the tanks on it.”
A semi truck hauling oil is followed by two vehicles on U.S. Highway 85 while going through the small town of Fairfi eld about 16 miles north of Interstate 94 on Saturday morning. A street sign denoting the highway was recently clipped by a vehicle and is now crooked.
FAIRFIELD, N.D. — Joe Kessel is blunt when he talks about a proposed project that would make U.S. Highway 85 four lanes from Interstate 94 to Watford City, N.D.
“Why haven’t they got it done yet?” he asks with a hearty laugh.
The Billings County Commissioner lives a half-mile off the well-traveled Bakken Oil Patch thoroughfare only about four miles south of the McKenzie County line and said he deals with oilfield traffic every day. He even believes the drop in oil prices over the past year hasn’t created that much of a slowdown along the highway.
The public will get a glimpse of the 62-mile project proposed by the North Dakota Department of Transportation for the first time this week when public scoping meetings are held at 5 p.m. Monday at Belfield City Hall and at 5 p.m. Tuesday at Watford City City Hall.
Jamie Olson, the NDDOT’s public information specialist, said there’s no telling how long the four-laning process would take, but said it could last upward of a decade. There’s also no dollar amount attached to the project yet, as it must go through multiple approval steps first.
“It’ll take a long time once they complete that environmental (assessment) portion of it,” she said. “That’ll help to answer some of those questions: How long are we looking at? What are the options?”
Dustin Monke 