Queen City Refinery
"The Queen City Refinery was constructed on the west edge of Dickinson in 1954 by area investors. Crude for the refinery came from the Fryburg field. The refinery was closed five years later.
A member of the original investors told the Press in 1973 that the plant failed because it lacked ability to make maximum use of crude oil. Like the packing industry, where total use of the raw product is important for a profitable operation, this would have been necessary for the local refinery to have survived. During its short operation, the Queen City Refinery manufactured excellent heating and diesel oils but was unable to produce
truly high grade gasoline because of equipment problems. Transportation and distribution problems helped lead to its closing.
Ernie Culp of Dickinson, who remembers that his Culp Truck Lines hauled in crude oil to the refinery said "the diesel fuel was second to none." After the refinery closed, several unsuccessful attempts were made to reopen it. These included not only start-up attempts for the existing equipment but tries at turning the facility into a distribution point for fuels. "These men[the original investors] were
not the first to learn about the famous swinging pendulum of the oil industry," the Press wrote in 1973 in a look back at the still-closed refinery. They weren't the last, either.
In 1974, after standing useless and increasingly ugly at the end of West Villard, the plant was bought by Northland Oil and Refining Company, and under owner-manager Ken Thomas, it was started up again. The company repainted the holding tanks that had turned an unsightly rust color after years of disuse and razed some old ugly buildings. By 1976 the firm was finalizing a three-year contract for crude oil and was looking at
establishing a firm market throughout North Dakota.
The company manufactured diesel and residual fuel (No. 5) and was operated year-round, although not at capacity. A couple of years later, the plant had constructed a new office building and sold land on its east boundary, lots which were developed by three eating establishments. While the refinery had an "annual" fire for a few years which produced spectacular smoke whether or not much damage was done, there was no smell problem. The city's residents were spared the stink of sulfur from the refinery because it only worked with "sweet" oil, that is, crude that does not have a high hydrogen sulfide content.
In early 1981, manager Ralph Finkle closed Northland Refinery because of economic problems brought on by President Reagan's sudden decontrol of oil prices. Finkle said the plant was too small to be able to absorb the impact of competing with larger refineries under the new prices. This abrupt abandonment of the facility came, ironically, on the verge of North Dakota's greatest oil development period. The year 1981 closed as the state's record oil-production period, the peak of new development that had started on Christmas, 1976. On that day, near Killdeer, a wildcat well set off development that was to increase at a dizzying rate for the next five years. In 1977, Dickinson and surrounding towns found themselves becoming oil boom communities as the highly-successful Little Knife Field churned out one successful hole after another. Developed chiefly by Gulf Oil, the field had many free-flowing wells 'and a long string of "hits" before a dryhole spoiled the record." (From Centennial Roundup p. 74-75)