The number of facilities served by rail in the oil patch in western North Dakota is on the rise.
Amy McBeth, BNSF regional public relations director in Minneapolis, said crude unit train facilities are served by BNSF at the following stations: Stanley, Tioga, Dore, Eland, Epping, Trenton, Republic and Manitou.
"They are all operational. Fryburg and Berthold are not fully operational yet, but should be before the end of 2012," McBeth said. She said these are not BNSF owned or operated facilities. They are facilities that BNSF Railway serves, meaning BNSF is shipping the crude by train for customers.
Article Photos
Submitted Photo • This July 24 photo provided by Enbridge Pipelines (North Dakota), shows the steel rail ties being placed on the Phase 1 track which will be used to load oil directly from truck to rail car only for a six-month period until Phase 2 (pipe to rail car) is complete.
Katie Haarsager, community relations adviser with Enbridge Pipelines (North Dakota) LLC in Minot, said the Enbridge Pipelines (ND) was scheduled for its first delivery of train cars on Sept. 7 to the Berthold Rail Project. The first delivery of crude will go out of that facility by early in the following week. As Phase 1 goes into service, they will be delivering one unit train per week until Phase 2 is complete in 2013, Haarsager said.
The rail project is part of Enbridge Pipelines (ND)'s Berthold Station Expansion Project.
Haarsager said Enbridge's rail facility is located south of the Berthold Station. The rail facility located north of U.S. Highway 2 is not affiliated with Enbridge and is being run and operated by Sand Source Services.
Andy Cummings, with media relations for Canadian Pacific Railway in Minneapolis, said a rail-loading facility near Van Hook now is up and running.
That facility is just east of New Town and was built on CP property by a private company.
New Town also has a rail-loading facility that CP serves.
CP has up to 40 rail-loading facilities across its network in the U.S. and Canada. The number includes a rail-loading facility in Estevan, Sask., that opened a few months ago. Bakken oil from Saskatchewan moves through the U.S. Midwest, including North Dakota, U.S. West Coast and eastern Canada to reach refineries in Canada and United States.
In July, Smart Sand, a provider of proppant and related logistics services to the oil and gas industry in North America, and CP announced a partnership to supply high-quality frack sand to major U.S. markets by rail.
Their plans are to build a new frack sand transload facility that is expected to be the region's largest to serve the Bakken Formation in the Williston Basin.
The announcement said the frack sand transload facility will be built at Makoti and would begin serving the Bakken in early 2013.
Unrelated to BNSF trains hauling crude, BNSF has intermodal facilities across its network, McBeth said.
"The vast majority of these facilities are owned and operated by BNSF. Minot is one of the exceptions," she said.
"Intermodal transportation is the transport of truck trailers or containers by rail. These facilities are where the containers or trailers are loaded on rail and unloaded. We partner with ocean carriers and trucking companies to provide a key part of the supply chain," McBeth said.
"BNSF delivers a wide variety of consumer goods in the U.S. through our intermodal facilities. This includes many items purchased in retail stores and restaurants," she added.