Experiencing the Bakken Tour

provides extensive, first-hand look at Williston Basin boom

BY KRIS BEVILL

The local philosophy in the Bakken is that if you want to do business there, you need to be there. There’s an obvious reason for this: Locals are so busy they can’t keep up with phone messages and random requests for information. But there’s another reason, too: Unless you’re there, you can’t truly comprehend the enormity of what is happening. The Bakken boom deserves to be seen with your own eyes, and if you can find a local to show you around, that’s even better.

Jeff Zarling, founder and president of Willistonbased web development, communications and marketing firm Dawa Solutions Group, launched the Bakken Field Tour last year to offer a first-hand look to anyone wanting to better understand the Williston Basin. He says he got the idea for the tour after national media attention in late 2011 led to a sudden influx of inquiries from people all over the world, all wanting to know more about the boom but having no real knowledge about the area in general. The tours have drawn a global audience of investors, developers and media, but local residents and business people also regularly attend the tours, proving that it’s difficult for everyone to keep up with the rate of changes taking place in the region.

This year, Dawa Solutions is hosting tours from Williston and Dickinson. One of the first events of the season, held in May in Williston, attracted a small but diverse group, including representatives from a local trucking company, leaders of a major shipping supplies company and a television news crew from France. Attendees were there to consider investment possibilities, catch up on the latest developments and educate themselves on the boom and its impacts.

Each tour begins with a 3-hour workshop, delivered by Zarling, which covers the history of Bakken oil drilling, technological developments that made the current boom possible, economic activity, risk factors and current development needs. His goal is to provide attendees with enough information to enable them to conclude independently long the boom will last, which he says is always the No. 1 question.

There is so much ground to cover during the workshop and driving tour, literally and figuratively, that the day stretches easily to eight hours. The Williston-based tour includes a stop at a Target Logistics crew camp on the eastern edge of town, where visitors are given a tour of the facility and treated to a surprisingly high-quality lunch at the camp’s cafeteria. From there, the day includes a pass through Watford City, Alexander, New Town, Tioga, Stanley, Ray and Epping.

There are few stops on the road — if you exit the highway, the wait to merge back onto the highway amid endless truck traffic can throw the whole day’s schedule off track. But Zarling keeps attendees engaged while on the road and does his best to put the boom’s impact on the region into perspective for all tour attendees. He gets admittedly excited when talking about the development opportunities in the region, but he’s also honest about the difficulties that come with it and provides the perspective of a resident and business person when discussing issues such as housing, traffic congestion and quality of life changes, like hunting grounds that have been lost to oil development. When attendees get a whiff of awful-smelling hydrogen sulfide (H2S) as the tour van drives downwind from a well, Zarling explains what it is (a heavy gas associated with natural gas production) and the hazards it presents to workers. He acknowledges the rampant flaring of natural gas at many of the wells throughout the area, but is quick to point out the difference when the tour enters the “older” part of the Bakken. There, trucks and flares are fewer because the infrastructure to capture and transport natural gas has caught up to drilling. It’s a hopeful indicator of what the future may hold for the rest of the region.

Tour organizers promise an experience that allows attendees to “see and feel the sheer volume and velocity of activity” in the region, and that promise is surpassed. Attendees, see, hear, smell, taste and feel the impacts of the boom, although what they choose to do with the information is as varied as their places of origin. PB

Kris Bevill Editor, Prairie Business 701-306-8561, kbevill@prairiebizmag.com