Early Reaction Positive from Helms with ND’s Pay To Plug Program
According to the director of the North Dakota of Mineral Resources Lynn Helms, the programs aimed at plugging abandoned oil and gas wells and reclaiming the site are generating more jobs than the state officials expected.
Earlier this year, the ND Industrial Commission approved the well plugging program using $33.2 million in federal CARES Act funds. The program was disclosed to the public as a way to keep oilfield workers in the state during the downturn. The logic is that when the industry rebounds, the workers would be in state and available rather than scattered across the country.
Helms told the North Dakota Industrial Commission this week that workover rigs are now in operation as the program gets underway. Helms said the program is creating more jobs than expected.
“Workover rig operators told us it’s actually requiring 50 full time employees to keep up with each one of those workover rigs,” Helms said. “We thought that we would employ 600 at 20 rigs, we are actually at 700 with 14 rigs and will push that to about 900 next week.”
There is a Phase II coming next, which was authorized by the Industrial Commission to use COVID-19 relief funds for reclamation work on the sites. Helms expects the reclamation program will get underway by the end of the month, and he expects it will produce more jobs than earlier estimates.
“We thought that each reclamation program would probably employ 12 full time people, we are now informed that is more like 30, so when we get going with the reclamation side we had anticipated we might employ 600, we are actually going to employ 800-900 people full time on that reclamation side,” Helms said. “The benefits are going to be larger and spread over lots more small communities.”
Helms praised the use of the federal tax dollars to provide jobs to workers dislocated due to the pandemic and associated oil price drop. He added the reclamation program will restore about 2,000 acres of land that can again be used for agricultural purposes.
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Should I Stay or Should I Go
Joseph “JB” Bendick comments on the recent shift in oil and gas employment. Bendick points out many of the laid off workers are leaving the industry completely due to lower wages offered than before COVID/OPEC/GREEN issues.
To listen to the full length interview
Wind, Solar Subsidies Can Go Away
Thanks to generous tax breaks for wind and solar power, renewable energy producers are reaping huge profits. But the subsidies come at the expense of taxpayers, and they’re pushing conventional power plants into premature retirement, which is threatening the reliability of the electric system.
To a large extent, the amount of coal, natural gas and nuclear generating capacity that might shut down in the next few years depends on whether Congress recognizes — and addresses — the serious stresses undermining the U.S. electricity industry.
And the extent to which Congress addresses these issues depends, in large part, on its willingness to end tax credits for wind and solar power.
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