Todd Brickhouse, CEO of Basin Electric, revealed the plans while speaking on a panel at the Williston Basin Petroleum Conference in Bismarck.
Brickhouse said it would be a 1,400 megawatt power-generating facility and become the utility cooperative’s largest power-generating facility.
“It will be the largest capital expenditure project that Basin has ever done,” Brickhouse said.
Brickhouse did not specify a location for the facility, saying it will depend on pipeline negotiations.
In an interview, Brickhouse said the power plant should be in service by 2030 or earlier and would have a price tag in the billions of dollars.
He said it would use about 7% of the natural gas currently produced in North Dakota.
Brickhouse called the natural gas plant “an extension of Basin’s historic strategy” of having coal-fired power plants at the mouth of the coal mine.
He said the goal would be to site the plant near the source of the natural gas.
Basin Electric operates two natural gas-fired power plants in North Dakota, the Pioneer Generation Station near Williston and Lonesome Creek Station near Watford City. Each facility produced at least 1 million megawatts of electricity in 2023, the highest amount since the facilities began operating in 2013, the cooperative said on its website.
North Dakota has an excess of natural gas, a byproduct of oil production.
The state produced an average of nearly 3.4 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day in February, according to the Oil and Gas Division.
Brickhouse said the facility would still need board approval and would not be presented to the board until a site is chosen. It also would need regulatory approvals, including from the Public Service Commission.
Julie Fedorchak, a Public Service Commissioner who led the discussion, called the announcement “great news,” despite the unknowns.
“We need more generation in North Dakota and it would be a great use of gas,” Fedorchak said. “We have more gas than we need and we can get it out of state, so that’s a win for that as well
During the panel discussion, Brickhouse noted that North Dakota saw a 60% increase in electricity consumption from 2013 to 2022.
Much of that consumption is related to North Dakota’s oil boom and energy industry.
Brickhouse also highlighted investments in transmission lines in northwest North Dakota.
The discussion began with Fedorchak criticizing recent federal regulations that will make it harder for North Dakota’s coal-fired power plants to continue operating.
In light of that, Pierce Norton, CEO of ONEOK, which operates several natural gas processing facilities and pipelines in North Dakota, said natural gas can play a critical role in power generation.
He wrapped up the discussion by saying that each of the three main power sources — fossil fuels, renewable energy and nuclear power – each has a weakness.
For fossil fuels, it’s emissions; for renewable, it’s reliability; and for nuclear, it’s cost.
“All three can work together to solve the other’s problems,” Norton said.
The Williston Basin Petroleum Conference, which is marking North Dakota passing 5 billion barrels of Bakken oil produced, will wrap up Thursday.
