North Dakota oil boom: American Dream on ice

If the country that is selling you oil/energy is doing bad things this reliant nature of our relationship also ties our hands when it comes to calling them on their shit. See the Ukraine or pretty much any geo-political matter.

Isolationism isn't the only solution, but inter-dependance has it's own drawbacks.

I'm 90% sure it's electric (As opposed to gas, which is quite common in the area, especially the more rural areas).

My sister however does live in an area where gas is common and they have a 1,000 gallon tank for it. It costs them about 4 times what they normally paid for it. What the cost is exactly, I'm not sure. I know it used to be cheap and what what it is now is really expensive.

"Hi, I'm Tom Becker, I'm here to do X" "Becker? Do you know Bill Becker?" "I do! He's my cousin!"

And immediately everyone is totally disarmed and we have common ground even though we live half a state away. Everyone really does have no more than 1 or 2 social links separating everyone else in a region. Your last name is a really powerful device in a conversation with other people and it's really awesome to have that kind of link to a people in a country that otherwise is completely devoid of that and culture in general.

With the huge influx of people in north western ND, that is no longer true of that area. In fact, my 'regional social bubble' has been effectively cut to about 70% of it's original size because the people that live west of me aren't the same people that used to live west of me.

This brings me to my second problem: People don't want to, or literally cannot stay in their home towns.

It has become very, very expensive to live west of Glen Ullin, and if you are a woman, it has also become very dangerous. Renting in Dickinson costs comically huge amounts of money and if you happened to own a house in Williston, well your property tax has went up by a factor of four so sucks to be you if you can't pay that any more. If you want to purchase gas in Dickinson or any further west, you need to prepay for it, which is an idea that didn't exist in the region before all this, but again, crime has become an issue.

Somehow, Williston is still operating in the red because infrastructure costs money turns out and paying for all the public services required of a city that is growing at the rate it is is crippling, not to mention the police force is way understaffed because the kinds of people that are attracted to these kinds of jobs are also the kind of people that tend to commit a cocktail of felonies in a state where crime may have well used to not exist.

Meanwhile, despite all these problems, the state has decided to play super nice with the oil companies and reduce tax rates for them no less than twice since they've shown up for reasons I can't quite comprehend (again, Williston and other cities still operate in the red because of all of this.)

The existing infrastructure is going to total shit and the roads are incredibly dangerous, especially during the winter months. We have trains that are blowing up in cities 250 miles away for reasons that may or may not be caused by this boom. There are a dozen oil spills every month and the drinking water has become very questionable for cities that are in the Bakken region.

All this on top of what has been done to the environment proper. What used to be rolling plains is now a shitshow of wells and flares. Unlike coal mines, which are required to restore the prairie to a state that was equal to or better than how they found it, no such strict laws exist for oil companies, so guess what it's going to look like 30 years from now. I mean, you literally have coal companies like Great River displaying the state of their mines after restoration and bragging about how much better everything is after they leave with 'before, during, after' picture galleries. That will probably not exist in the oil company's PR portfolio.

Finally, the state was operating in the black before all this. We didn't need this at all. What the state should have said is something to the effect of,

"You can come and drill, but you will pay for everything you do. Any cost of anything, whether it be infrastructure, property taxes of existing citizens, expansion of emergency and civil services, eventual decommissioning costs, spills, accidents and problems and all their associated costs -- those costs are your's to take on, plus taxes. If you don't want to pay all that, then kindly consider your requests denied until a point where you are willing to actually pay for the hell you are about to unleash on the state."

That of course didn't happen, so now we are here. We have a third of the state converted to a total wasteland, their residents effectively told to 'deal with it', all for reasons that almost certainly come back to the almighty dollar that only a select few will actually ever see.

Fuck the oil boom

I go back home a couple of times a year and driving through cities like Dickinson is an experience. It's barely recognizable. The roads weren't designed to handle the traffic they're seeing. The expansion these places are seeing is insane.

I'm glad I moved away before the oil boom, it isn't a place I would want to live today.

As for me, I used my downtime to rest up and count the days that I am rotated out of Williston.