Bakken Resources (fka BKKN)

[roger wilco]

As the Bakken heats up again, Williston prepares for more growth

As the Bakken oil fields get busy again so will $BKKN

http://billingsgazette.com/news/as-the-bakken-heats-up-again-williston-prepares-for-more/article_a1f87308-00c6-5e91-b560-31459c6b822b.html

Even as the bottom fell out of the Bakken boom, Shawn Wenko saw good news in the economic statistics for Williston, America’s fastest growing small city during the oil days.

True, more than 6,000 jobs had vanished along with the high oil prices in October 2014. That’s when overproduction put more crude on the world’s plate than it could possibly consume. The housing shortage, which had oilmen living in camper trailer villages and shipping container man camps, disappeared. The vacancy rate for apartments swelled to 40 percent. Restaurants experienced a 30 percent drop in business.

But something else happened, the oil workers who stayed started putting down roots, said Wenko, Williston's Economic Development executive director. Now the crude is making a comeback and Williston is ready to roll again.

“People who decided to make Williston their home started bringing their families in. So, things were slow, they started to lay people off, but school enrollment started going up,” Wenko said. “School enrollment is good, it’s strong. Our birth numbers are off the charts. A good year in Williston, back in the day we might have done 300 a year. We’re tracking about 800 a year right now with birth records.”

That number, 800, is a good birthrate statistic for a town of just under 30,000 people — and which was a population of only 12,000 a decade ago. If half those children grow up in Williston, there’s going to be a boom in child care jobs and the need for new schools. There were 2,302 students in Williston elementary schools in 2009. In 2015, there were 3,645.

There’s another area in which 800 is Williston’s lucky number: in drilled but uncompleted wells, or DUCs. When the oil boom went bust, companies walked away from hundreds of wells that had been drilled but never hydro-fractured. It’s the fracturing of the oil shale miles beneath the Western North Dakota plain that frees up Bakken oil. After a well is drilled deep and then horizontally, explosives are sent down to crack the earth. Then, sand and fluid is pumped into the fractured bore under high pressure to keep the opening from collapsing. Oil then seeps out of the shale into the void and is pumped to the surface.

Now that the West Texas Intermediate price of oil has risen above $50 a barrel, fracking crews are bringing those DUCs back online.

“We’re probably at about 15 frac crews in the state right now,” said Alison Ritter, of North Dakota Oil and Gas. “We’ll probably add about 10 more frac crews over the next year to get to 25.”

Each fracking crew employs about 40 to 60 workers. Another 40 to 50 people will hire on to service the job by trucking supplies to the site and hauling the tanker trailers of oil away once the wells come online. Ten more crews would mean 1,000 new jobs in the Bakken this year, Ritter said.

The growth is already being felt. Last summer, there were only five fracking crews in North Dakota.

The state is also expecting to add 10 or more drilling rigs to its current fleet of 41. The new rigs would bring another 1,200 jobs to North Dakota, as each drilling rig, boring new holes in the earth, employs 120 people.

“The estimate for the year is that we reach 50 rigs and 25 fracking crews and that’s about 2,200 jobs,” Ritter said. “And if the price of oil reaches $60 a barrel, while we don’t expect it to get to $60, we would see more rigs.”

The number of drilling rigs working in North Dakota now is nothing like the 200-plus rigs working the oil play at the peak of the boom. But, there’s more activity than statistics let on, said Kent Ellis, who has worked in the oilfield for more than three decades. He now runs an office of land men, the people who track down mineral rights holders and arrange contracts with oil companies.

“The difference between a 2006 rig and ones now is the new ones can actually walk 40 feet and drill the next hole,” Ellis said. “They can almost do three times the work without having to be torn down and moved.”