Company building oilfield housing

• Image

Press Photo by Ashley Martin Klee Morrison, manager of Mountain West Oil Field Services near Dickinson, carries bedding out of a portable housing unit Friday.

Talk about it

A Utah company is bringing hundreds of trailers to oilfield workers in the area. They will build a $1 million facility north of Dickinson and hope to employ 30 to 50 people.

Mountain West Oil Field Service hopes to begin construction by May, said Klee Morrison, manager of the local branch. The facility will be off of U.S. Highway 22.

Oil production in North Dakota was up nearly 30 percent over the first 10 months of 2009, according to The Associated Press. Most of the oil activity is in the western part of the state, leaving hundreds of workers needing places to stay.

Mountain West provides just that by trucking portable, temporary housing to drilling sites.

“Our expectations are high,” Morrison said. “The sky’s the limit. As many as I can get out, I’m going to have built and put out.”

The facility will be built on the 7.4 acres surrounding Miller Insulation and include a 50-by-100 shop with a 50-by-50 office attached, he added.

It is expected to be finished this summer, General Manager Debbie Sorensen said.

The Vernal, Utah-based company also has branches in Wyoming and Colorado, Sorensen said.

They hope to have about 200 portable housing units in the area by the end of the year, Morrison said.

Albert and Darla Messer live across the street from where the facility will be constructed.

“We’d rather it wasn’t out the front door, but we’d rather see the economy improving too,” Albert said.

Darla has similar feelings.

“I’m not going to cry about it,” she said. “At least it’s a real man’s job.”

Sorensen said the company is in the planning phase of construction and Dickinson senior code enforcement officer Mel Zent said they have not applied for a building permit.

The property they’re located on was already an industrial zone, said Diane Brines, county tax equalization director.

“We provide housing, water, sewer, disposal of those things, anything that they would require to make it as comfortable as possible for them on site,” Sorensen said.

The company provides anything from small office units to bathroom facilities and large living quarters.

“We’ve got some that stack up that house 30 individuals, and that includes a kitchen, a living area, restroom and everything,” Morrison said.

They come stocked with anything the workers need to be comfortable, from silverware to televisions, he added.

Some of the trailers are already being stored on the company’s land north of Dickinson while they are cleaned and restocked. It will be easier for the company to operate when their facility is purchased, Sorensen said.

“It will be used for an office facility, of course, and then the rest of it will be used for the trucks and things like that and we’ll have a line that we can hook the houses up to for power so that they can be cleaned,” Sorensen said. “When the houses come back in out of the field, before someone else lives in them, you go in and clean them out really good and restock them.”

Jay Elkin, Stark County commissioner, said he is happy the company chose this area.

“This state and its economy rely heavily on two industries,” Elkin said. “One is agriculture and the other one is energy, and without those two industries, our state wouldn’t be prospering the way it is and neither would this region.

“We need to encourage these companies to build here, stay here and grow here and help southwestern North Dakota grow as well.”

Tags: news, local, oilfield, housing, trailers, oil