Here’s a few more articles on Bakken I found interesting – adjusting to growth and drop in crude oil prices. How would you handle calls for police service increasing by a factor of 180 over the last 8 years?
1/9 – Oil Patch Dispatch – Record number of births reported in Oil Patch in 2014 – Along with the huge number of workers moving to North Dakota, there is another year of record baby births. Main hospitals in Minot, Williston, and Dickinson report increases of 5%, 7%, and 13% respectively.
1/20 – Dickinson Press – Nearly 3M gallons of brine spill; ND oil boom’s largest leak – about 70K barrels of brine, extremely salty water has leaked about 15 miles north of Williston. Cleanup and monitoring is underway. More details to following in next few months.
1/24 – Shale Play Media at Bakken.Com – Layoffs in the Bakken and a shifting economy – One Gloomy Gus thinks the current count of 157 drilling rigs will drop to 50 by June. Since his company services existing wells, he doesn’t see any drop in his work or staffing. 50 rigs? a 70% drop from recent levels? Sounds like someone wanted to see his name in the paper.
Other people contacted for the aricle don’t see a radical impact from the price drop and rig drop.
1/23 – Reuters at Bakken.Com – In North Dakota’s oil capital, optimism abides despite price slump– People contacted for this article are seeing slowdowns, particularly suppliers to the drilling companies. Consensus of interviews suggest this will slow down the extremely inflation and allow companies and cities to catch up with the demands for services.
1/25 – AP at Bakken.Com – “Not Mayberry anymore”: Oil patch cops scramble to keep up – The small town world is gone for cities in western North Dakota. Places where there used to be police call with a weapon involved took place every 4 or 6 months. Now it is weekly. Great quote says the idea used to be that temperatures in the minus 40 range kept the riff-raff away. I get it – that would do the trick. Or it used to.
Finding some meth in a car with license tags from Sinaloa, Mexico means the street drugs aren’t coming from that ornery high school guy that is growing a couple of weed plants along the stream on the back corner of his dad’s farm.
Here’s a brain stretcher. How would you staff this police department:
Watford City police got 41 calls for service in 2006. Last year they received 7,414. That’s 181 calls now for every 1 they received then.
2/16 – Bismarck Tribune – Williams County man camp to downsize – Interesting tidbits about the man camp market.
Capital Lodge has a 1,100 bed man camp between Tioga and Ray. It is down to 300 occupants. They wanted to change into a traditional hotel, but the county said no. It was licensed with a CUP to be a man camp with the understanding it was in an industrial area temporarily on the condition that when it stopped being a man camp the entire facility would be closed and removed.
Target Logistics has about 2,200 beds in three camps. A consultant to Capital Lodge estimates the temporary housing in Williams County is down by 3K from the peak of 9K or 10K.