One of the prize business acquisitions of Minot's MAGIC Fund recently completed a new office and service facility in the Great Plains Energy Park.
Pure Energy Services USA has now been operating in Minot for more than two years, having come to the Magic City in part due to a loan from the city's business development program.
Landy Brown, head of North Dakota sales for Pure Energy, said Wednesday that it is nice to be working out of a permanent home. Prior to the completion of the new building, Pure worked out of a temporary location in the 5100 block of U.S. Highway 2 East. The energy park is located only a few hundred feet away, just east of the former site.
Brown said Pure moved into the building "probably about a month-and-a-half ago now."
"We're quite happy to have some new facilities and office space they're really nice," Brown said. "The shop is working out real well, with plenty of space for equipment."
Brown said the building has three service bays, plus one additional bay currently dedicated to the expansion of a new product line for Pure in Minot, cased hole wireline services.
"The end bay is a wash bay, so the equipment's always looking tip-top," he said with a smile.
One of the energy park's best selling points when it was still on the drawing board was its location, just off a four-lane federal highway and a few miles from another. Brown said that location has turned out to be every bit as good as advertised.
"It's perfect just perfect," he said. "Access in and out is easy, and it's a straight shot west, where the bulk of our work is."
When The Minot Daily News spoke to Brown in March 2009 for a story, Pure was preparing for an expansion of its selection of fracturing equipment, as well as expanded wireline services. Since that time, Brown said, the company sold off its fracturing division, leaving more time and resources for the Minot launch of its cased hole wireline services. Pure introduced the services in the U.S. in 2006, and cased hole service has been available at the other two Pure service locations in Grand Junction, Colo., and Evanston, Wyo.
"We've decided to really go back and stay with the roots of our company," Brown said. "Of course, we've been providing the production testing services for some two, three years already in the Williston Basin. And now the cased hole wireline service will be introduced and I'm keeping my fingers crossed this quarter."
Cased hole services are downhole operations that include perforation, multiple zone recovery and logging operations. Companies use cased hole services in an attempt to maximize production, well performance and increase value of a well.
Brown said Pure weathered the slowdown in oil prices earlier this year without too many complications.
"Our basic clients really pulled through for us," he said. "We were able, with a real aggressive marketing strategy, to go out and obtain some new accounts as well. That really floated us through the first half of this year or so.
"And now, everybody's ramped back up, and we've been quite busy which is good news."
All in all, the marriage between Pure and the City of Minot seems to be an amicable one, Brown said. Although the feedback he has heard has been fairly limited, it has been positive.
"They've been right behind us, and they seem quite happy," Brown said. "We've brought in some people, and I think that makes people happy. And we were also able to provide some good-paying jobs to local folks here too. And with this new service line, there will probably be some other new jobs, and probably some transfers as well."