While many are getting prepared for this summer’s anticipated oil activity, ONEOK is busy managing their Bakken big picture plan. Part of this plan includes staffing their Sidney, MT, office, which was opened last year.
“We opened up our new offices here in Sidney really effective last year, which was a project two-and-a-half-years in the making,” Craig Forsander, Vice President of Natural Gas Pipelines Operations, ONEOK, said. “It’s a 20-acre complex with 60,000 square-foot of finished office, shop and warehouse.”
According to Forsander, a little more than half of the Sidney office is dedicated to a warehouse and fabrication shop that is orientated towards their well connect operations in the Bakken. The remaining space is occupied by administrative members, leadership teams, engineering and technical resources.
“We probably run at about 70 percent occupancy today,” Forsander said. “Some of that is by design. As we built the complex we wanted to leave some room for growth as we continue to see the development of the Bakken assets.”
When asked about the symbolism of opening an office during a time when “low oil prices” and “downturn” dominate the media headlines, Forsander didn’t seem too distracted from ONEOK’s big picture plan.
“Well certainly we have a long term viewpoint of the basin here and we try to staff for base needs with the peaks that we see, along with a little contracting help,” Forsander said. “We’ve kinda seen a continued growth across our footprint here.”
A footprint that runs from the southern portion of the Bakken near the I-94 corridor, all the way to the Canadian border.
“Certainly the heart of that being in McKenzie County and maybe eastern and northeastern McKenzie County,” Forsander said. “We also have a strong presence in Williams County, Dunn County on up into Divide County. Then stretching over into eastern Montana also.”
One key reason ONEOK decided to expand in Sidney and not say, Williston, was due to their roots with their legacy facility.
“Our original legacy facility was the Grasslands Plant, which is about 15 miles southeast of Sidney,” Forsander said. “That’s where the original footprint was and still works very well for access to all the (Bakken) geography.”
If you connect Bakken’s geographical dots, one can see how ONEOK is well positioned for the future.
“If you look at the major towns like Williston, Dickinson to the south, Sidney to the west and Watford City right in the middle, our footprint really touches all of those,” Forsander.
Another reason the Sidney location made sense for ONEOK was due to their natural gas pipeline.
“Sidney is also where that transition takes place between natural gas and natural gas liquids,” Forsander said. “This is where our Bakken natural gas liquids pipeline it starts and originates in Sidney and moves south taking liquids to southern markets.”
Forsander added that even though the industry was impacted by the price downturn, ONEOK still had active projects in the Bakken.
“As we got our Lonesome Creek and Bear Creak completed here as well as some of the gathering systems associated with those facilities, we were really still in a growth mode,” Forsander said. “We were really building out the infrastructure that we have today.”
The decision by ONEOK to continue their build out, not only symbolizes their commitment to the Bakken and its resources, but their actions of adding of employees and contracted workers, symbolizes their commitment to the community.
“Really with the downturn that started out there in the middle of 2014, we were still pretty active and decided to continue to move forward,” Forsander said. “A lot of that was based on a long term viewpoint of the basin and those prospects continuing to develop.”
According to Forsander, ONEOK’s 2017 plan will be just as busy as the past couple of years, if not busier.
“There is still a lot of new growth still occurring across the footprint,” Forsander said. “Just within the Bakken alone we have built seven processing plants from 2011 or 2016.”
New growth indeed. Forsander said their Bakken growth over the past five years has been very significant.
“Today we are about four times the size, volume-wise, than we were in 2012,” Forsander said.
He said ONEOK has been very diligent following the their long term vision and despite market conditions, they have been able to continue their progress and seize growth opportunities.
“Really even here early in 2017, I think we are seeing a little bit of that move where producers where we are seeing more rig activity, more well completions, and we are seeing record volume throughputs on our systems.”
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