Inside

Baytex works around the weather . . .
By Cecile Wehrman
Exploration companies
working in the Divide County
area have been from extreme
to extreme this year -- from
blowing snow and record
snowfall to a deluge of rain the
likes of which have rarely been
recorded.
But the oil field never stops,
and neither does Baytex Energy,
USA.
“We don’t ever halt, we just
have to work through it,” said
Donn Campbell, area supervisor
for Baytex in Divide
County.
The company currently
operates 27 wells in Divide
County and has the potential
to drill another 150 wells over
the next five years.
“Thirty wells a year, weather
permitting,” Campbell said.
Working in the winter is hard
enough.
“It’s very tough due to blowing
snow, ground blizzards is
what you guys call it. Snow
removal off the township roads
to keep production going. Drifting
-- it was tough this winter,
cold to operate. It’s hard to
start,” said Campbell.
Everyone was looking
forward to getting caught up
this spring, and being able to
work in a little more forgiving
environment, but that was not
to be.
“Last year the thaw was a lot
slower,” and they could work
around soft spots.
“(There was) so much rain,
then it froze, then it snowed,”
Campbell said, and then it
rained some more.
Record rainfall created new
bodies of water and connected
existing ones, inundating as
many as 200 roads -- many of
which the oil companies rely
on to service existing wells.
“We’re back to producing 65
percent of our wells,” Campbell
said just after the July 4th
holiday, and with no more significant
moisture, that number
will be improving.
But it’s still not easy and it
won’t be for some time.
“We have several wells that
we still don’t have access to
due to road closures. There’s
really no way around it. You
just have to wait ‘til the water
subsides. If we can’t, we’ve
even built up roads, county
and township roads, ourselves,”
said Campbell.
What Baytex is doing and
what more and more oil companies
are doing all the time,
is to try to work with local
officials to set some priorities
and work cooperatively.
Said Campbell, “We get with
the county guys, of course,
“We have several
wells that we still
don’t have access
to due to road
closures.”
-- Donn Campbell
Area Supervisor
Baytex Energy USA
county personnel, and township,
and decide what we can
do to access and get in and
out – and the farmers, landowners.
So far we’ve had great
cooperation from landowners,
township and county people.”
The company is very flexible,
he said, and willing to
remedy what ever problems
present themselves. In one
case, that meant loaning a
four-wheel drive vehicle to a
landowner whose road was
torn up.
“If we move something and
we tear it up and we make
tracks, we fix it,” he said.
If a landowner has too
much water, the company has
even sought temporary water
permits to use slough water
for fracing -- helping to alleviate
the wear and tear and
roads, as well as helping to
open some roads inundated by
water.
“It has to be a health and
The Ensign 67, drilling on the Colby 23-14-160-99H, in
Garnet Township.
Baytex Area
Supervisor
in Divide
County
Donn
Campbell
looks over a
spread sheet
with Julie
Haugland at
the Baytex
field office
south of
Ambrose.
Trainee John Fitzgerald (left) gets a hand with the slips from floor hand Scott
Bradley, on the Ensign 67 rig.
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