The buildings keep going up in the Permian Basin, as the construction industry does its part to keep up with the boom.
By Al Pickett, Special Contributor
Brad Henderson said he has told a lot of folks recently, “If you haven’t seen Midland in the last two weeks, you haven’t seen Midland.”
Indeed, driving across West Texas, one doesn’t have to see a drilling rig or a pump jack to know that the oil industry is booming in the Permian Basin. New construction is popping up everywhere, from corporate offices and field offices to maintenance and storage facilities, lay down yards, truck washing facilities, and other ancillary buildings, as well as the plethora of new apartments, motels, and additional new businesses that are springing up all across Midland and Odessa.
The bustling oil and gas industry has sparked an amazing amount of new construction to handle the increased activity. Henderson is president of Western LLC, a real estate development and construction company that is servicing the Permian Basin.
“At the end of the day, we are really real estate developers with a design/build operation in-house,” Henderson noted.
Western is just one of many companies that have gone into overdrive to keep up with the construction demands of the Permian Basin’s oil and gas industry.
“When the boom picked up, people were telling us that they should have made this decision six months ago,’” Henderson said of the fast pace that the Midland/Odessa area is experiencing these days.
Western LLC, which provides turn-key facility infrastructure for the oil and gas industry, is currently developing mixed-use oil and gas facilities in the various shale plays throughout the United States, according to Henderson.
The company also specializes in meeting the needs of today’s airports, providing “one-stop shop” airport development that includes all design, permitting, and construction of executive terminals, transient hangars, corporate hangars, airport office buildings, executive and T-hangar complexes, equipment storage buildings, and maintenance facilities.
Among the many projects that Western LLC has built recently are oil field service and maintenance and support facilities for FIML Natural Resources in Barnhart and Bison Drilling and Field Services in Odessa, in addition to a number of hangars for corporate jets at the Midland International Airport.
Western LLC is also building new hangars to house corporate jets at Stinson Municipal Airport, located on the south side of San Antonio, as well as offices, warehouses, and maintenance truck shops in Kenedy and Corpus Christi, to service the burgeoning Eagle Ford Shale play.
Western LLC will do complete site development in addition to the new construction. Henderson says a perfect example is the facility it built near the Rocker B Ranch west of San Angelo, turning an open pasture into a facility that meets all Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and Texas Accessibility standards.
“From permits to caliche and fencing, we take care of it all,” he said.
One of the newest projects that Western has gotten involved in is salt water disposal facilities that cut down Environmental Protection Agency regulations.
“We have a customer that is owned by a large investment firm that is very much anti-risk,” Henderson explained. “It is pricey to do, but we pour a concrete slab with full 8-12-inch concrete walls. If a tank ruptures, the salt water is contained.”
Perhaps Western’s most distinctive project is the planned executive residences and offices it is calling Permian Point, located near the Midland airport.
“Company executives fly in on Monday and leave on Friday,” Henderson offered. “They get tired of staying in a motel. Or they need a place to put up VIPs when they come into Midland/Odessa.”
Permian Point will have three buildings, with 20 or 30 units per building. Units are for lease or for sale, according to Henderson. He said a company owning its own executive residence is saving approximately half the cost of comparable executive housing solutions in the area and can save a company more than $50,000 per year over hotel costs.
Western LLC’s other unusual project, believe it or not, involves space travel from the Midland airport. Henderson said Western completed a spaceport master plan for the Midland Economic Development Corporation and was instrumental in assisting XCOR Aerospace with the design of their new facility, a business that will be flying people into space.
“Midland will be a designated space port,” Henderson stated.
XCOR is moving from California to Midland, along with another company that has vacuum chambers and makes space suits.
Why Midland, Texas, instead of California?
“Lower taxes and a get-it-done attitude,” Henderson said.
Western LLC is building the facilities at the airport for XCOR and its service companies.
Quick Construction
The booming Permian Basin economy has attracted construction companies from all across the country, not just West Texas. An example is ClearSpan Fabric Structures, which has its corporate headquarters in South Windsor, Conn., and its manufacturing facility in Dyersville, Iowa.
“We do buildings of all kinds,” said Matt Niaura, senior vice president of ClearSpan.
Niaura said ClearSpan can build a building that is anywhere from six feet to 300 feet wide and as long as the customer wants. Everything is manufactured in Dyersville and is then shipped to location. The polyethylene fabric is then pulled over the trusses.
“Our ability to respond by building a 10,000 to 20,000-square-foot building in two or three weeks is attractive to our customers.”
Uses for ClearSpan buildings vary from indoor soccer, football, or tennis practice facilities to sand or salt storage. Niaura said ClearSpan built a facility for the U.S. Air Force to house the Stealth bomber.
“We even built a structure for an oil exploration company on the Ice Road in Alaska in minus-40 degree temperatures,” he stated. “The largest structure we have built was just under a mile long—for a test track.”
Because the fabric is translucent, it doesn’t need light in the day, according to Niaura—a feature that is an advantage in a remote location. If the facility is being used at night, he said it doesn’t need much light because the fabric is reflective.
Pipelines and Production Facilities
Not all of the new construction in the Permian Basin is visible, however. With the thousands of new wells being drilled and placed into production, someone has to build the pipelines to take the oil from the wellhead to the tank battery or production facility. That is the specialty of the E.D. Walton Construction Co., Inc., which has been in business in Snyder since 1957.
Over the last five years, as Wade Lancaster, president of E.D. Walton Construction, estimates, the company has laid more than 1,000 miles of local gathering lines and injection alone. In addition to laying and maintaining the pipelines, E.D. Walton Construction also installs production facilities, and constructs and maintains plants.
The company has yards in Odessa, Sundown, and Mason, as well as in its headquarters in Snyder. One of its biggest clients is Kinder Morgan, which owns the 49,000-acre SACROC Unit in Scurry County, the nation’s largest enhanced oil recovery project using carbon dioxide injection. Lancaster says his company lays water and CO2 lines for injection as well as the gathering systems.
One of the newest technological advancements impacting his work, according to Lancaster, is something called “hydro-excavation.”
“It is a big vacuum cleaner,” he explained. “It puts pressurized water into the ground and then sucks the dirt out. It is a heck of a lot easier than hand digging.”
It is a lot safer, too, because it prevents digging into a line as the company might be crossing an existing pipeline as it lays a new line.
The biggest challenge for the construction industry, according to Lancaster, is no different than the oil and gas industry itself.
“The biggest problem is the labor market,” he stated. “Finding qualified people.”
The growth of the Permian Basin is amazing to Lancaster.
“When we started in Odessa in 1990, we could have had any building,” he marveled. “Our yard is a mile west of the airport. Now look at all the new construction around us along Interstate 20. I have been here 33 years, and I thought we had lived through a lot. But this is a different environment. Of course, I didn’t think I would see $100 barrel oil. That is the driving factor.”
The Permian Basin is proof that a booming oil and gas industry means a booming construction industry, which is just one more component in the region’s roaring economy.
Al Pickett is a freelance writer in Abilene and author of four books. He also owns the West Central Texas Oil Activity Index, a daily and weekly oil and gas reporting service. For more information, e-mail apickettc@sbcglobal.net.