Whiting Petroleum looks to the future in the Bakken
Whiting Petroleum looks to the future in the Bakken
By Jerry W. Kram
Whiting Petroleum Corporation thinks it’s going to be a player in the Bakken oil patch for a good long time.
To symbolize that fact, the company will keep a time capsule to remind future employees of the company’s humble start in Mountrail County. Whiting’s area operations supervisor for the Northern Williston Basin Darius Frick, described the dozen or so artifacts that would be preserved at the end of a dedication ceremony for the company’s new offices at its Robinson Lake facility on N.D. Highway 8.
The office complex is across the highway from the company’s natural gas liquefaction plant, which condenses propane and butane from natural gas from area wells and ships the gas to consumers for home heating and other uses. The office also manages all of Whiting’s oil wells in what is know as the Sanish oil field.
Some of the artifacts going in the time capsule represented where the company is today, including the company’s current annual report and business plan. Others represent how far the company has come in the five or six years it has been drilling in the Bakken Shale in Mountrail County. One artifact was the company’s first emergency contact list, which only had seven names on it. The current list, with its 60 or so names also went in the box. Other symbols of the company’s beginning in the area included its first oil field map, first one page training manual (Frick noted, ‘The manual’s much longer now.’) and photos that documented the building of the offices and gas plant and even the company’s first snow blower.
