An Oil Boom Bigger than Alaska

I took a poll of friends and family to see if people were really staying at the same job all of their life or if they were changing jobs just as much as Colorado.  I got mixed results.  Some stayed at jobs their whole lives, while some others tried living in bigger cities and switched jobs a lot, but they all had one thing in common.  They all lived in ND because they wanted to, not because they HAD to, something that didn’t seem natural to me.

In the What's North Dakota's Secret article from Forbes.com it shows "North Dakota and Montana" to be the only two states with a surplus of money.  Which made me wonder: Where is that money going?  In the same article North Dakota governor John Hoeven explained "We targeted five industries for growth, industries where we have natural advantages in North Dakota: value-added agriculture, advanced manufacturing, technology-based businesses, energy and tourism." As I talked with friends, a few relatives and just about every super friendly person in Fargo, I started putting ND’s unemployment puzzle together.  Although Fargo is growing in many areas,  I realized I needed to look west in order to find where the jobs were growing the most and inflation was excessive.  

Then came the oil industry to the west, in a small town called Williston.  There were too many questions in my head, which made me become speechless as I continued to explore my subject.  I could NOT believe what I found in Williston, ND.  This is a city that shows to have had a population of 14,716 in 2010.  A city that was a small farm community until recent research found ways to get to an oil field that was compared to Alaska's. Until a few years ago that oil was in rock and very costly to get to.  Now with advances and lots of diesel the oil is very easy to get to using a method called fracking.  From the website dangersoffracking.com it affirms that "Hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking", is the process of drilling and injecting fluid into the ground at a high pressure in order to fracture shale rocks to release natural gas inside."  This same concept applies to oil.


From a few newspaper articles I have seen the results of inflation where the “oil boom” hit.  Williston had some strange occurrences happen.  In an article from the USA Today: "The McDonald's in Williston is one of the busiest in the country, and they need to pay $15 an hour just to attract employees to work there."  Residents have to pay $8 a gallon for milk, which is also not normal for the state.  In other areas like Bismarck and Fargo crew is paid more around the wages of Colorado at around $8 an hour and milk is around a normal (for them) price of $3.50 per gallon.


As a little experiment, I decided to apply for 3 jobs in my area of expertise in Williston, ND.  Two jobs contacted me within 4 business hours of me applying for the jobs.  One offered me $5000 more per year than my current position.  I was in shock, as I am not in the oil field business, but in the office/customer service/computer fields.  I guess those jobs are needed just as badly as the oil field ones.  The job would be working with oil business, so that might have helped the situation.  If you have somewhere to live you could make a lot of money in Williston, otherwise there just isn't much there.  From the video below you can see one reporters view on the oil boom and Williston.  I watched in awe as I could not believe what I was seeing or hearing.  It is an oil boom that is bigger than Alaska and it isn't expected to end in our lifetimes.

*Disclaimer: this blog and videos are for informational and educational purposes only and my experiment with the above job situation was only an experiment.  Results may not be typical.  

 

This video was borrowed from TurnKeyOil and was posted on Jan 17, 2012 on YouTube.