On The Montana Side of the State Line, 28 Miles West of Williston, Epicenter of the Bakken, Fracking Sand Terminal, Bainville, MT

Twenty-eight miles west of the epicenter of the Bakken: Bainville, MT

+ largest straight piece of continuous track between Wisconsin and the Bakken
+ neither Roosevelt County nor Bainville have any zoning laws to control growth
+ the Bakken: insatiable appetite for fracking sand  

= One of the most incredible stories in the Bakken: at least $30 million being poured into a town with 208 people and an annual budget of $250,000.

A developer is putting a huge fracking sand off-loading terminal in Bainville, 28 miles west of Williston.

By early next year, each week a pair of 40-car trains, and eventually 100-car trains, will pull weekly off BNSF’s main track onto Procore’s mile-long sidetrack, offloading tons of fracking sand.

At peak production, the Bainville facility could handle 1 million tons of sand per year, enough to fill 600 truckloads a day. But the volume will probably be half that, Milino said.

Back of envelope calculations:

1 million tons x 2,000 pounds/ton = a large number
a typical frack is now up to 4 million pounds of sand
divide that large number by 4 million pounds = 500 wells

2,000 wells/year are being drilled in the Bakken

The story:

By the time most townsfolk learned of the plans by Procore Logistics LLC of Calgary, Alberta, the land was purchased, the permits largely secured, and construction of the rail facility and nearby man camp were under way.

Procore is investing at least $30 million in this town, which has an annual budget of about $250,000. The project alone will more than double Bainville’s population within two years and send 150 trucks a day — and eventually as many as 600 a day — steaming into the nearby oil field.

To solve Procore’s “heads and beds” problem for its 350 workers, work has begun on an employee man camp on Bainville’s eastern edge. The camp will be a mix of pre-manufactured dorms with some multifamily housing, a dining facility, gym and theater.

And that's just the beginning.

It's an incredible story. Go to the link. It will give folks outside the Bakken some idea how fast things have moved, and are moving, in the Bakken.

This may be "the longest, straightest section of track between Wisconsin and the Bakken," but my hunch is there were other reasons Procore Logistics LLC of Calgary, Alberta (Canada) selected Bainville. Regular readers of the blog already know what I'm thinking. [Longest, straightest section of track? All kinds of track is being laid in North Dakota for crude-by-rail projects; I assume new track could have been laid anywhere between Minot/Bismarck and the North Dakota/Montana state line.]

The promoter of this new fracking sand off-loading facility says this was as close as they could get to Williston -- 28 miles. In fact, as oil activity moves back into Montana, Bainville is as close to the "new" Bakken epicenter as Williston was is to the "old" Bakken epicenter.