Rigmat owner Travis Jordan says the giant wood and steel platforms that his Ronan-area company produces are the “Swiss army knives of the oil fields.”

His company could also be described that way for its versatility.

MT Rigmat’s main products are rig mats and camp mats — 8-by-40-foot platforms that provide a foundation for drilling rigs and other oil-field needs.

But MT Rigmat was also responsible for fabricating the structure of the new solar parking facility that recently opened in downtown Missoula. The company’s platforms also have been customized as snowmobile bridges in Minnesota and a logging company is looking into purchasing mats for crossing swampy areas.

Building lake docks for Flathead Lake customers is another angle that Jordan would like to pursue.

The company’s manufacturing activity for the Bakken oil-producing region of North Dakota and Eastern Montana keeps the fairly new production facility busy, though.

Each drilling rig needs 30 to 50 mats. And though the mats are built to last seven years or more, they can be destroyed when a 2-million pound rig is moving from one hole to the next.

Recent estimates say some 33,000 wells will be drilled in the Bakken formation over the next 20 years, with more than 5,000 before 2015.  

According to the latest estimate by the U.S. Geological Survey, there are 7.4 billion barrels of recoverable oil in the western part of North Dakota and extending into Montana. That’s more than twice the oil the USGS estimated could be recovered five years ago.  

It’s all good news for MT Rigmats, which Jordan, an electrician by trade, started in January 2012.

Sales didn’t take off at first — “It seemed like each sale was a matter of prayer for a long time,” Jordan said — but then the company started to double its orders every month. Things slowed down in November as the weather hampered activity in the field.

“It’s looking good again in the second quarter,” Jordan said. “We were down to about three guys over the winter; we’re up to nine or 10 now.”

The plant produces between five and six mats a day that sell for just over $4,000 each. When things are going full steam, Jordan said the workers might be at the plant until 11:30 p.m. and return the next morning at 5 a.m.

“We’re often getting a week’s notice for 30 mats,”  he said. “It’s feast or famine, never anything in between.”

When the business is running at full production, Jordan said that it uses up a semi truck load of wood every other day and a semi load of steel each week.

Jordan said the high-quality wood he obtains from local sawmills is a big selling point for the mats, as is the work done by the experienced welders he has been able to hire. His facility’s proximity to the fields also is huge — before he jumped into the mix, the closest supplier was in Canada.

The idea of providing a “local” product was what led Jordan into business. The closest facilities he could find building rig mats for the Bakken area were in northern Alberta or Houston.

Jordan jumped to fill in the gap, though he didn’t have experience in the oil industry. He had moved to Ronan from Bonner’s Ferry, Idaho, five years ago to take over an electrician business while the owner was on a mission trip to the Philippines.

“He returned and the recession was still going on, and the oil fields seemed to be a solution for something to do,” Jordan said.

He decided that building the mats would be a good way to compete, so Avery Peters, a friend looking for work after his tomato greenhouse was no longer viable, joined him in the venture.

Jordan had a background in industrial automation and his electrician experience was a plus, but he said he and Peters still had a lot to learn about manufacturing. They leased a shop, gained a bit more education in welding and went into business.

“I’ve been known to wonder what I got myself into,” Jordan said of the ambition of the manufacturing enterprise.

Jordan visits the Bakken area regularly to drum up business and learn more about the needs there. He said the environment of the boom towns has changed monumentally in the last year, with amenities built up rapidly to match the influx of workers.

“A year ago it was absolutely insane, it was very uncivilized,” he said. “They’ve done an incredible job at raising the bar on the infrastructure. Streets are paved that were once just mudholes. A year ago I couldn’t find a motel room and couldn’t afford one if I did. I had to sleep in my truck.”

“Now I can get a motel room at 1 o’clock in the morning and Walmart has stuff on the shelves.”