On The Plains, The Rush For Oil Has Changed Everything

http://www.npr.org/2014/01/29/264912750/on-the-plains-an-oil-boom-is-transforming-nearly-everything

by tokenadult • 12 years ago

63 40 12 years ago

650REDHAIR2• 12 years ago

(Grew up in ND, live in SD now)

At one time starting wages were $100k/year, but I don't know anyone starting that high nowadays, except maybe strippers.

The "man camps" are pretty horrible and most people blow their pay on booze and girls before they leave. It's really depressing.

Steltek• 12 years ago

Sounds a lot like the Paradox of Plenty [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse]. ND is fixated on the oil industry to the detriment of absolutely everything else.

Hell, aren't they just burning all the extracted natural gas because it's basically a distraction from the liquid crude? There was an terribly sad update of the "Earth at Night" satellite image showing ND lit up like a Christmas Tree.

w1ntermute2• 12 years ago

They need to send some people to Norway to learn how it's done: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/99680a04-92a0-11de-b63b-00144... (Google the URL and click on the link to bypass the paywall, or read it here: http://pastebin.com/055t6hiM).

650REDHAIR2• 12 years ago

From my limited understanding it's not profitable enough to capture and transport the burn off.

protomyth4• 12 years ago

They're trying to capture the gas now, ND issued some new rules on it.

ND is not just fixated on oil, farming is just as big as ever. Look at the number of crops ND is first or second in the nation at delivering. Lord knows the words this spring will be "flood control" in the east.

pilom2• 12 years ago

My understanding was they were extracting natural gas and burning off methane. Methane is much more difficult to transport (because the molecules are so small it leaks out of everything as a gas and its very difficult to get it cold enough to be a liquid). Eventually they'll have methane transport capabilities but for the moment it just gets burned off.

hueving2• 12 years ago

There was an terribly sad update of the "Earth at Night" satellite image showing ND lit up like a Christmas Tree

Why is it sad? The light is from lights in towns, etc, not gas fires.

protomyth4• 12 years ago

Welders still get that, truck drivers with some OT.

The local towns will probably have the housing in the next year so the camps will be gone. Sewage planning is an amazingly complicated process. Also, the road changes to loop around towns are going to help.

JPKab2• 12 years ago

Yeah, this is very common. It's simple economics: the barrier to entry for the majority of "starting at 100K" jobs was just geography, due to a short supply of workers and a huge demand. Eventually enough workers flood in, the wages drop, and the only people who can get a high starting salary are the highly skilled tradesmen (drill operators, welders, etc)

Tie onto that the fact that rents are relatively high due to a housing shortage, and you get a bunch of people living paycheck to paycheck just like they were before.

protomyth4• 12 years ago

Skilled vocational workers still make the cash (and drivers for other reasons), but grunts make grunt wages. There are several state grants to get more vocational training, not only for oil but for the extremely short supply of people for infrastructure projects. Due to worker and driver shortages many building projects in the east are delayed or taking much longer than thought.

girvo• 12 years ago

Heh it's exactly like the rural towns that get turned into mining towns here in Australia. I've worked as a labourer out there with my dad (he's a civil engineer, works on the roads out in these towns). They start as a tiny rural area, developed into a boom-bust town that caters to the fly-in-fly-out workers who come in to work for 6 figures. Then the mine closes, and the town is left as a shadow of its former self, but with so much extra real estate, empty shops, and closed bars (apart from one or two). It's curious to watch.

jmspring• 12 years ago

In the deserts of California, there are many towns that were booming during the various gold/silver/etc booms and now are, if they still exist, a mere shadow of themselves. The town of Darwin, CA is one that I was talking with someone about recently...Circa 1900, several thousand people, 2010 census - 43.

protomyth4• 12 years ago

This area has seen it before in recent times, and though this time will probably last longer, there is a lot of planning on how to grow then shrink.

Contrary, to the article, Williston has never been a "nice" town, and that gif is f'n scary.

dools• 12 years ago

And then everyone complains about lost jobs ..

ChuckMcM2• 12 years ago

Seems like there is a design project waiting to be done for dynamic infrastructure.

eric-hu• 12 years ago

You mean burning man?

w1ntermute2• 12 years ago

That animated GIF near the bottom of the article is super creepy.

fennecfoxen2• 12 years ago

I know! Is this some new NPR web thing? I think I prefer the Times' full-screen hard-to-control multimedia extravaganzas. At least they look good. :b

fiatmoney• 12 years ago

Agreed. A picture of a human motionless except for one body part === uncanny valley.

cl8ton2• 12 years ago

I kept looking at the older gents behind him to move/speak/scratch but I just kept seeing that guys hand move :-/

eru• 12 years ago

Off topic: How do these animated gifs cope with the 256 colour limit?

rangibaby• 12 years ago

By using dithering. You can see it quite clearly on the guy's face if you zoom in.

dilap• 12 years ago

I have to say, I really dig 'em both (there's another in the article headline). A very unique effect.

learc83• 12 years ago

They're called cinemagraphs, here's a link: http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/cinemagraph/

chantech• 12 years ago

The salaries in the oil sands in Canada are even more ridiculous. > 100k for truck drivers. Entry level engineers at 150k + 30% bonuses. > 200 + 40% on site bonuses for a manager.

hueving2• 12 years ago

I don't suppose you mean software engineers? :-)

ahelwer• 12 years ago

Nope, software dev salaries around Calgary are stuck at $65-70k starting.

jeza• 12 years ago

I gather this is the result of the increasing price of crude oil, making small oil fields that weren't previously considered viable now viable. The output of these wells is enough to essentially stop oil prices from going through the roof for the time being.

saryant2• 12 years ago

It's not just that the cost of crude is up, advances in horizontal drilling and fracking have made these wells economical despite lower crude prices.

Fracking has been tried on and off for decades but it was only recently that wildcatters struck upon the right formula and techniques to unlock the Bakken.

Horizontal drilling is key in this region because the Bakken is like an oreo cookie: a thin layer of crude sandwiched between two huge layers of rock. Fracking breaks up the small inner layer while horizontal drilling lets a single well drill down into that layer and then within that layer, unlocking far more crude than with regular vertical drilling.

vardump• 12 years ago

Fracking and horizontal drilling are 20-30 years old technologies. The only reason they're practical now are high oil prices. Technological improvements have been rather incremental in last 20 years in those.

What was needed was not technology, but oil prices over $80 per barrel.

At least that's what someone who does this for living said.

pilom2• 12 years ago

Most of this is natural gas and not crude oil. The reason these fields are now viable is because of hydraulic fracturing (fracking). Before fracking, no one thought you'd ever get any oil out of that area. Now all of a sudden its all available again. Its like finding a new gusher just because you can drill deeper than you could before.

Also natural gas is WAY cheaper now that it was 5 years ago. Its so cheap that a lot of oil companies are voluntarily not pumping out of some good wells because they want to decrease supply.

cl8ton2• 12 years ago

Even NASA has seen the difference in ND from space.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/fracking/10463494/Fr...

andyjohnson0• 12 years ago

The NYT had an interesting video-based article [1] looking at the life of a female truck driver who moved to North Dakota due to the oil boom.

tldr: steady work but lower-than-expected wages, poor conditions, male dominated environment, housing problems.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/14/opinion/running-on-fumes-i...

On The Plains, The Rush For Oil Has Changed Everything

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