Cable reels in North Dakota and the Bakken

Oil field cooperatives top the state's sales list

North Dakota's EIA table is unlike any other. The two largest electricity retailers in the state in 2024 were rural cooperatives: McKenzie Electric Cooperative, which sold 6,527,653 MWh, and Mountrail-Williams Electric Cooperative, which sold 6,298,269 MWh. Both serve the Bakken, the oil field in the north-west corner around Watford City, Williston, Stanley and New Town. Investor-owned Montana-Dakota Utilities and Otter Tail Power come next, with Northern States Power, the Xcel Energy company, fifth.

Co-ops that outsell every city utility do so because of what they power: pump jacks, compressor stations, saltwater disposal sites, gas processing plants and the camps and towns that grew up around them. Each new well pad and facility needs a line extension, a transformer and buried power cable. That is a steady source of empties, scattered across hundreds of square miles of pads and service yards.

What an oil field reel pile looks like

Bakken yards tend to hold a few distinct kinds of reel. Co-op line crews leave URD and primary distribution reels from 48 to 72 inch flanges. Oil field electrical contractors leave power and control cable reels, often heavy-duty, sometimes with lagging boards still nailed around the flanges. Instrumentation and fiber crews leave small reels. Many piles are mixed, from several makers, with no return route to any of them.

Heavy use shows. Drive holes get torn by reel trailers, flanges take knocks from loaders, and reels left on bare ground through a thaw rot where the staves meet the flange. Photograph both flanges of the worst reel in each size and we will tell you how we grade the rest.

• Distribution reels: 48 to 72 inch flanges, from co-op line work.
• Oil field power and control cable reels: mid to large, often heavy-duty.
• Instrument and fiber reels: 24 to 42 inch flanges, light and dense on a trailer.
• Reels with lagging still on: note it; lagging marks a heavy-duty build.

Distance across the prairie

I-94 crosses the state from Fargo through Jamestown, Bismarck and Dickinson to the Montana line. I-29 runs north from Fargo to Grand Forks and the Canadian border. The Bakken is north of I-94, reached by US-85 from Belfield up to Watford City and Williston, by US-2 across the north from Grand Forks through Minot to Williston, and by ND-23 through New Town. Watford City to Fargo is roughly 390 miles by road.

Freight is paid by the trailer, and in North Dakota a trailer covers long distances to reach a buyer. A full van of 42-inch reels, which Sonoco's guide puts at up to 120, spreads that cost thinly. A dozen 72-inch reels from one pad do not. We look for a second lot in the Bakken, a buyer in Montana or a load heading back east to share the trip, and the quote will say which.

Winter sets the calendar

North Dakota winters are long and very cold, with wind and blowing snow that close roads for a day or more at a time. Reels left lying flat in a yard become drifted-in lumps of ice. A frozen reel pulled free with a forklift can split a flange that was sound in the fall. If you know a pile will sit through winter, stand the reels on their flanges on timber or gravel before freeze-up and leave a cleared lane.

Spring brings its own problem. Many rural roads carry seasonal load limits while the frost goes out, and soft ground at well pads can stop a loaded trailer. We don't run trucks on a fixed calendar, so a pickup is booked for when the road, the weather and a carrier line up, and we say that up front.

Fargo, Grand Forks and the Red River Valley

The eastern edge of the state is a different market. Fargo and Grand Forks sit on the Red River across from Minnesota, and their reel lots come from city growth, commercial building and Otter Tail and Xcel distribution work. Those lots pair naturally with reels from Moorhead and the rest of western Minnesota, and they are close to buyers along I-94 toward the Twin Cities.

BEAD in North Dakota

North Dakota received $130,162,815.12 in NTIA's June 2023 BEAD table, forty-eighth among the states. The figure is small largely because the state's rural telephone cooperatives had already built fiber to most farms and towns. What remains is the last scattered locations, so fiber reel demand here is steady rather than large: small and mid reels with drums at least 20 times the cable diameter, as NEMA WC 26 sets for fiber.

Getting a North Dakota lot quoted

1. 01

   Size and count

   Read flange x traverse x drum off each stencil and count each size.

2. 02

   Photos

   The pile, one stencil per size, and the worst reel of each size, both flanges.

3. 03

   Where and how

   Nearest town or pad location, road surface, any seasonal load limits, and what loads the trailer.

4. 04

   Agree and book

   We price each size group, then book a truck for when road and weather allow.