From
Verendrye Electric Cooperative website:
Verendrye has grown to serve over 12,300 meters in the six counties surrounding Minot, a 4,000 square mile area requiring 60,000 poles and 4,300 miles of line to do the job. We have 55 employees dedicated to serve our member/owners.
Update regarding this cooperative in the Minot Daily News (data points):
- hooking up new customers at an accelerated pace
- pace not expected to slow for some time
- the coop added about 1,000 customer accounts last year (2011) (not counting FEMA hookups; following flood)
- expects another additional 1,000 customer hookups this year
- one large customer: Enbridge
- Verendrye plans to double the size of its substation at Berthold where Enbridge's CBR facility is
- also serves Great Plains Energy Park in Minot
- new home construction
- five new hotels in Verendrye's territory under construction
- will be taking over operation of electrical distribution system at Minot AFB; DOD privatized the operation this past year; Verendrye got the 50-year contract, beginning June, 2011
- first time in Verendrye's history that they put cable in the ground in January
- Central Power Cooperative is building a $7 million substation outside of Minot to supply Verendry with additional bulk delivery transmission
- Central Power also putting in 17 miles of new transmission lines; $3 million price tag
Most amazing data point:
Verendrye, based in Velva, North Dakota, is doing all this with 59 full-term employees. I wonder how many federal employees were assigned to electrical distribution system at MAFB before it was privatized, and how many Verendrye will assign against that conract?
Actually this may be the more amazing data point:
Minot is not exactly in the center of the Bakken activity, and yet, one little utility is seeing all this activity, most of it due to Bakken oil activity, at least as far as I can tell.
Although Minot is 30 miles to the closest "Bakken well" to the west, Minot is becoming a staging point for everything heading into the Bakken.
ReplyDeleteMinot has larger infrastructure for distribution, gathering, and moving the resources into the Bakken. Take fracking sand for example: for the last two years sand has been off loaded in Minot and trucked west. This can be said about more and more items.
The other dynamic is corporate headquarters. Hess has had higher end jobs in Minot for five years. Haliburton, Baker, Key and all are increasing their presence substantially. Other companies are growing as a result of activity in the oil patch, although they do no work on oil production. Engineering firms in particular. One firm has a need for 50 PE's. They are civil in nature, nothing to do with oil production. This is the over flow coming to Minot. Everyone is gearing up for growth in Minot.
I think it's going to be very interesting to see how Minot, Williston, Watford City, Bismarck, and Dickinson develop over the next 20 years. They all have their own niches, they all "bring something different to the table," and most interestingly, they all seem to have their own "personalities," their own ideas about growth.
DeleteIn some respects, Minot may have the best of all worlds.
Minot's advantage today is size. It has been around 40,000 population forever. Them adding 20,000 is 50% growth. Williston adding 20,000 from a starting point of 15,000, is 130% growth. Much harder to manage. Minot had bigger everything in place, so growth should be more managable. I spoke with a city planner two years ago. There were expecting growth to 60k, hope it took 10 years, that they could manage, whereas if it happened in 3 years, that was a problem. That was pre flood destroying 25% of the city and population estimates increasing to 80k projected in the next five years. Like you said, all have their own pro's and con's.
ReplyDeleteKent
"...expecting growth to 60K, hope it took 10 years..." : I think the Bakken has taken almost everyone by surprise. The population growth of Williston and Minot is one example, but I think the most surprising example is takeaway capacity and the fracking backlog. In February, 2011, over a year ago, corporate presentations and state government presentations said takeaway capacity was adequate and that the fracking backlog would be pretty much resolved by November, 2011. Both the fracking backlog and takeaway capacity are still problems.
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