OG Talks: Good Energy – Navigating the Bakken

My name is Brad McKamey. I’m a graduate of the University of North Dakota School of Law. I’m located in Bismarck, North Dakota and have been practicing oil and gas law for a little over a dozen years.

My name is Brad Gibbs. I’m a founding partner of Oliva Gibbs and together we are the Bakken the Bakken Brads. The Bakken, is a prolific oil and gas, producing area, much like the Permian Basin here in Texas. It extends, from West North Dakota, over to East Montana.

It’s seen a real resurgence, resurgence in the last few years since oil prices have gotten back up to a sustainable level. We’re seeing a lot more activity in the Bakken, and we’re very pleased to see it roaring back in the way that it has. Ironically, that means a lot of legal work, in North Dakota and Montana. Interestingly, there are not many operators that actually have their headquarters in the Bakken.

Most of them are here in Houston, some in Oklahoma City, some in Denver, scattered a few other places, but it’s very decentralized in that way. A lot of companies will have field offices, up there. So So we’ve been able to focus a lot on client development in the Bakken, being here in Houston, ironically, very far away from, North Dakota itself. But, Brad is in Bismarck.

So, can you tell me a little bit about sort of the sentiment and the scene in Bismarck these days?

Well, being in Bismarck, I’m just hopping a skip away from Williston where the headquarters of most of the Bakken activity is. So, CLE allows me to provide a firm presence on the ground, up in North Dakota.

There’s a larger labor pool. A lot of the historic capital in oil and gas has been focused in Texas, and in a few cities.

Houston’s kind of the Hollywood of oil and gas, which is why the NAEP convention is here. So it’s really just a lot of the companies that initially started exploring the Bakken were located in Houston and in other places.

And that transfer of kind of capital and labor markets never really fully made its way to Bismarck. Although there are quite a few attorneys, practitioners, and field workers for these companies, obviously, who live in and around the Williston Basin.

And just to add to that, the boom and bust cycles up there really had a big impact on the communities. They’re small to begin with. So, when the bust hits, people leave and it just takes longer for them to come back. So in light of that, in the most recent boom coming in the late 2000s, there’s just always been more of a presence in places like Houston.

We work with several large operators in the Bakken. Some very well known operators up there. I’d say at any given time, probably at least four or five active, clients up there, if not more. And so a pretty sizable, chunk of the firm is committed to the Bakken right now.

Yeah, I’d say our clients tend to share the same core values we do. They appreciate, the educational aspects we put on monthly webinars to bring news or bring attention to newsworthy topics or just provide educational experiences. They appreciate that. They appreciate that we try to be as responsive as possible and keep a dialogue open. So even when there’s nothing really going on as far as, fires to put out or, just maybe not deadlines, we’re still maintaining contact with clients. We’re giving them updates. We’re, just communicating with them to keep them in the loop, and I think they really appreciate that, that client service aspect.

Yeah. Well, being located in North Dakota, I would say my day isn’t that much different from our attorneys that are here. The biggest difference is simply the location, whereas they might have access to happenings that are going on down here, I have access to happenings going on up there.

Stuff like the North Dakota Industrial Commission is located right in Bismarck. That gives me access to that.

But otherwise, on a day to day basis, my my schedule wouldn’t be that much different from my colleagues.

And I would I would add that Brad’s days are often spent, helping, even other attorneys within the firm, tackle, you know, some certain very complex or nuanced aspects of North Dakota CLE. And he’s excellent about getting back to our clients about a lot of those issues as well as they arise. So he’s, you know, very much involved in a number of different projects at the firm at any given time.

I reach out to my colleagues in different offices all the time just because they have different experiences than I have and they see things that I, just looking at my narrow focus, maybe haven’t come across.

One thing, state courts often look to other state courts to to make their decisions, to influence how the law is being decided and how it evolves. So by knowing what my colleagues have come across, I might get a better sense of how a state court in North Dakota might, make a decision just based on decisions that have come down in other states. So, yeah, we’re always talking to each other, making sure that we’re keeping each other up to date with happenings that are happening in our, local jurisdictions that we’re working on.

Sure. I would just, like to close by saying, how much we value the relationships we’ve built, in the Bakken.

I’ve been working, the Bakken for, you know, well over ten years now. It’s it’s, one of my absolute favorite jurisdictions to work in. We find the clients up there are very intelligent, very keyed in, to what’s going on, very interested in learning everything there is to learn, and we just, really appreciate the opportunity to work in the Bakken. We see a lot of runway there in the next few years.

Kind of the the opposite of some of the consolidation we’re seeing, you know, in some other basins. We’re seeing a lot more, small private equity backed companies start to make an entrance in the Bakken. We’re actually seeing some of the larger publicly traded companies, exiting some of their Bakken positions and opening up opportunities for smaller operators there. So, again, it’s just a it’s it’s a very fun jurisdiction to work, both in North Dakota and on the Montana side, and, we look forward to having a lot of great client relationships moving forward there.

And being in Bismarck and, the greater northwest North Dakota area, it’s exciting for me just to see how the industry impacts the state.

Watching the way these communities have transformed over the last decade or two, it’s exciting to see.

The industry certainly is giving a lot to the state.

Our goal is to be the best law firm in the Bakken, or at least to give the other premier law firms a run for their money.