Sometimes things just fall into place for shippers who thought they were at the end of the world.
Such may be the case for agricultural exporters in North Dakota and the upper Midwest, possibly the most landlocked region in the United States.
North Dakota has gotten a massive — if that’s a strong enough word — boost from the oil and gas exploration industry, with fracking making the local economy boom like never before.
Fracking, the short form of hydraulic fracturing, is a process that allows energy companies to tap into vast, deep stores of oil and natural gas that were previously inaccessible. Turns out, North Dakota sits on a huge supply.
It’s been such a boon that the state, with a population of less than 1 million people, is sitting on a $2 billion surplus. Now here’s where things get interesting for exporters in the upper Midwest.
According to Bob Sinner, a soybean farmer in Casselton, N.D., the fracking industry has opened up opportunities to bring ocean containers to his inland neck of the woods, a location that was previously undesirable for railroads and ocean carriers to serve.
But some fracking sand — a commodity necessary for the fracking process — comes from as far away as China in ocean containers.
“All of a sudden, North Dakota has what it has always needed, an import of containers — 600 to 700 containers per month,” Sinner said at the Agriculture Transportation Coalition’s annual conference in San Francisco in June.
“The major concern for shippers as volume increases in the Midwest is equipment. The biggest deficiency area in the U.S. is the upper Midwest,” he explained. “Until 2005, when the economy and imports were strong, we didn’t really have a problem getting equipment. In 2005, the railroad that serves western Minnesota pulled that stop, and that increased our dray to 250 miles to Minneapolis.”
That’s not a concern any longer.
BSNF has taken note of the development, giving support (along with BNSF Logistics, carriers, trucking companies, and of course, exporters) to an intermodal rail ramp project in Minot, N.D. The first phase of the project, built on spec without assurances that BNSF would serve it, is set to open in fall 2013, with capacity for 1,000 containers per week.
The facility, along with one opened on Canadian National track in Chippewa Falls, Wis., is expected to relieve pressure from exporters who depend on service in Minneapolis.
It also shows that it can sometimes take some unusual things for exporters to get the equipment they need, like North Dakota becoming an economic power while the rest of the country struggles along. – Eric Johnson
Fracking crazy
