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Working Draft |W. Caraher and B. Weber | Do Not Cite without Permission of Authors
boom. The composite landscape presented in this guide includes ephemera that are
momentary or will vanish before the end of the decade. Some landmarks in this book will
almost certainly be hidden as part of efforts to return the region to a romanticized vision of
a pre-boom state or as different economic priorities continue to reshape the landscape. Our
tourist guide draws attention to workforce housing sites, fragile roadside memorials, oil wells
destined to be drained and capped, and bustling businesses poised to follow the crowds of
workers to the next boom site.
There are several themes that run through this tourist guide. We sought to describe
movement of people and resources throughout the oil patch by highlighting infrastructure
ranging from truck stops to pipeline hubs. We set movement in the Bakken against sites of
both very recent and more distant historical significance to the industrial past of the region
with particular attention to extractive industries. Through the guide, we direct visitors to sites
of recent environmental catastrophes and the locations of prominent accident
commemorated by communities and loved ones. Finally, we periodically leavened the guide
with some of the individuals we have met throughout our research in the oil patch. We have,
as much as possible, avoided direct criticism of the oil industry, communities, or, in most
cases, the mass media, but at times a thorough consideration of the Bakken as a living
landscape makes this unavoidable.
This epilogue of the guide provides a framework for reading this book as a piece of
scholarship. It addresses the challenge of using archaeological tools to document a
contemporary industrial landscape and locates our effort at the intersection of industrial
tourism, human landscapes, and oil. We hope that the academic apparatus will allow the
reader to appreciate the guide on a different, if not necessarily higher, level as a piece of
engaging and useful writing.
The guide would not be possible without the assistance of a vast number of individuals.
Richard Rothaus accompanied us on most of our trips to the Bakken, encouraged our work,
read drafts of the guide, and provided a running and mostly welcomed commentary on the
Bakken. Aaron Barth, Kostis Kourelis, Bob Caulkins, Carenlee Barkdull, John Holmgren,
Kyle Cassidy, and Ryan Stander are members of the North Dakota Man Camp Project and
knowingly or not supported the development of this guide. Journalists covering the Bakken
offered helpful insights throughout our work with special thanks going to Amy Dalrymple
and Emily Guerin, and photographers Andy Cullen and Chad Ziemendorf. Tom Isern
encouraged us to publish this book in his new Heritage Guide Series at the North Dakota
State University Press and read a complete draft and offered substantive commentary.
Suzzanne Kelly shepherded this book through the publishing process. The two peer
reviewers ensured that we avoid the most egregious errors of fact and judgment. All other
errors, of course, are ours alone.
Finally, this guide would not have been possible without the willingness of the residents
of the Bakken, various municipal officials, employees of Bakken businesses who found time
to answer our queries, and other busy people who decided to take a few minutes (and
sometimes more) to talk with us about their experiences, their landscapes, and their history.
Without their help this guide would not be possible.
Introduction
The Bakken oil patch ranks among the great achievements of the contemporary age. The
arrival of fracking technology in Western North Dakota led to an industrial renaissance that
transformed sleepy farm communities into crucial cogs in the global extractive economy.
Fracking technology made the area a global destination for roughnecks, petroleum engineers,
pipeline cats, fishers (who fish for tools and other objects accidentally dropped down
wells), truck drivers, carpenters, contractors, and electricians as well as journalists, adventure
scientists, academic scholars, photographers, and filmmakers. Low-unemployment, the
bustle of heavy industry, and a landscape of dramatic contrasts present a magnetic attraction
for the adventurous traveler. Pack your camera, your sulfur dioxide sensor, a pair of steeltoed boots, and your flame resistant Carhartt clothing as you get ready for a unique journey
to a frontier landscape forged by industry.
The patch itself is a bewildering sight to the unprepared visitor. Its vast area (over 100
sq. miles) and complexity can quickly overwhelm any effort to apprehend its significance or
to identify the most meaningful sites. This short guide is meant to direct the industrial tourist
in sampling the many remarkable sites in the Bakken with a particular emphasis on the
work and life of both the various new, and the historic, communities in the area. As with any
tourist guide, this is not meant to be exhaustive, but to identify characteristic types of sites
and to provide easily navigated itineraries across the region. The kind of industrial tourism
proposed by this volume remains in its infancy: This guide seeks to provide the educated
visitor to the Bakken thought points to stimulate conversation, puzzles to ponder, and clues
to guide your explorations. Welcome to a region of industrial, historical, and natural beauty
that is at once unique, and simultaneously emblematic of an essential aspect of modernity
upon which we are all dependent . . . though few experience.
oil in the Nesson anticline are very small.1 The next line in his report attracted greater
attention; he wrote that if reports of samples at a similar site near Minot prove true, this
would demonstrate the possibility of oil in the Nesson anticline.2 This led to prospecting
in Williams County, and local attention from both western North Dakota companies like the
Williston based Big Viking Oil Company, along with national attention from Standard Oil of
California. Both companies sunk deep wells along the Nesson Anticline, near the banks of
the Missouri River south of Tioga and Ray. A 1928 newspaper report quoted a Big Viking
employee claiming the Nesson dome had excellent prospects of being a source of oil and
gas.3 While lignite mines and oil wells did not produce vast or immediate benefits to the
region in the first third of the 20th century, they foreshadowed later activities in the area.
Oil prospecting finally paid off after World War II. After three decades of decline, the
region saw its first oil boom in the 1950s when the first systematic efforts occurred to
exploit the Bakken oil fields. Famously started by the No. 1 Clarence Iverson Well near
Tioga, most of the activity centered on a north-south line extending 100 miles centered on
this small farming community. By the mid-1950s Tioga and Williston both saw their first
man camps with hundreds of people living in trailers and other ad hoc accommodations.
This boom, which lasted for most of the decade, saw a 30 percent increase in population in
Williams County and a smaller, but no less obvious uptick in the population of McKenzie
County. In fact, the oil boom drew more workers and economic growth to the region than
the decade long construction project associated with the Garrison Dam across the Missouri
River. The gradual decline of oil production in the 1960s had as much to do with the
declining price of oil as difficulties in moving oil from the Bakken to refineries and markets
elsewhere. Even the construction of a refinery at Mandan (across the river from Bismarck)
fed by a pipeline from Tioga and another delivering to Moorhead, Minnesota did not allow
North Dakota oil to remain competitive in the global market. Production, drilling, and
populations declined across the western part of the state throughout the 1960s.
The second boom started in the mid-1970s when the political rise of OPEC and the
threats and realities of embargoes made exploration in North Dakota once again profitable
and reopened markets for North Dakota oil. Unlike the focus of the 1950s, when leases were
taken in every county in the state, this boom was a much more concentrated phenomenon
focused on what would later be broadly recognized as the Bakken oil patch. Once again,
both McKenzie and Williams counties saw significant bumps in population. But then
production increases by OPEC countries in the mid-1980s, and the accompanying drop in
prices, led to a decline in both oil exploration and production in North Dakota. The lower
A.J. Collier The Nesson Anticline, Williams County, North Dakota. U.S. Geological Survey Report Series
691. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1918): 216.
2 Collier, The Nesson Anticline, 216.
3 L. Peters Fractured Land: The Price of Inheriting Oil. (Minneapolis, MN: Minnesota State Historical
Society, 2014).
1
oil prices and the challenges of extracting oil from North Dakotas fields discouraged
sustained, boom-style activity in the Bakken through the rest of the century.
The oil boom of the second decade of the 21st century dwarfed the previous booms.
The introduction of hydraulic fracturing, advances in drilling techniques, and higher oil
prices spurred drilling in the Bakken at an unprecedented scale. While hydraulic fracturing
had been used in Alberta, Canada as early as 1953, its first sustained use did not occur till the
1970s and was primarily focused on recovering gas from low-permeability sandstone
formations. By 2003, Harold Hamms, Oklahoma-based Continental Resources was drilling
and fracking the western most portions of the Middle Bakken formation at the Elm Coulee
oil field near Sidney Montana. After a series of less than successful wells, Lyco Energy
Resources teamed up with the American multinational oil field services company
Halliburton. With Halliburtons cash and expertise in the relatively new horizontal drilling
technique, the partnership drilled the Burning Tree State horizontally for about 500 meters
through the narrow Middle Bakken formation and then fracked it to create a producing well.
By 2006, the new oil field was the highest-producing onshore field found in the lower 48
states since the first half of the 20th century.4 While the boom years had not yet begun, the
technology that would feed it was in place.
Crucial to the development of the Bakken was the combination of horizontal drilling
with multistage fracking where a well is fracked multiple times rather than just once. This
technique reopened the Nesson Anticline to large-scale oil production and allowed the
thicker Middle Bakken levels throughout the entire Bakken formation to become productive.
EOG Resources pioneered this method much earlier, but, in the Bakken, Governor Jack
Dalrymple celebrated the technique in his dedication of Continental Resources 2004
completion of the Robert Heuer 1-17R in Divide County. Dalrymple recognized that this
approach ushered in a new era in the American oil industry by unleashing the development
of the enormous Bakken oil field using horizontal drilling and fracture-stimulation
technology.5 In 2006, the Parshall Oil Field, with Parshall 1-36, produced over 500 barrels
per day. Russell Golds 2014-book, The Boom attributes the start of the North Dakota Bakken
oil boom to the well-publicized results of a well drilled by Brigham Exploration in early 2009
just west of Williston: Olson 10-15 #1H.6 Using technology developed by EOG Resources,
it became possible to frack a well multiple times by using oil pressure to seal already fracked
sections of the well. The Olson 10-15 #1H had a 3 km horizontal section that they fracked
20 times and by completion this well produced over 1200 barrels of oil per day. While the
amount of oil produced by wells in the Bakken tends to taper off rather quickly after two or
John J. Fialka, Wildcat producer sparks oil boom on Montana plains. The Wall Street Journal,
(2006) http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB114420151900517294
5 Jack Dalrymple, Robert Heuer 1-17R Well Dedication. Bismarck, ND: State of North Dakota,
October 27, 2011.
6 Russell Gold, The Boom: How Fracking Ignited the American Energy Revolution and Changed the World.
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 2014).
4
three months, most wells produce over 1000 barrels per day in their first week or so of
production. Olson 10-15 #1H was representative of the kinds of wells that would inaugurate
the 21st century Bakken Oil Boom. While landmark wells are significant, they do not
guarantee future results. It remains difficult to pinpoint the precise beginning of a
phenomena like an oil boom, which probably has more to do with the large numbers of
companies coming into the state to take leases, rather than the frenetic drilling activity. At
any rate, the combination of fracking and horizontal drilling activity, along with the
necessary market opportunities, at least in retrospect, poised western North Dakota for an
unprecedented oil economy.
From 1922-2009, the first 90 years of oil exploration activity in North Dakota, there had
only been 16,000 spuds (or well-starts). In the short period from 2010-2014, there were over
8,000. This increase in drilling, pumping, piping, and processing oil and natural gas created a
massive surge in population and industrial activity. Much of that focused on Williams and
McKenzie counties, but petroleum production extended across a total of nineteen of the
states fifty-three counties (including Adams, Billings, Bottineau, Bowman, Burke, Divide,
Dunn, Golden Valley, Hettinger, McHenry, McLean, Mercer, Mountrail, Renville, Slope,
Stark, and Ward counties), along with Richland County in Montana. In 2014, North Dakota
produced over a million barrels of oil today and ranked second only to Texas in oil
production in the U.S. The USGS estimated that North Dakotas Bakken oil patch, with 7.4
billion barrels of oil, held more than Alaska and most of the OPEC countries. This book
provides an accessible guide to visiting this remote, yet heavily industrialized area and aims
to facilitate the readers understanding of the character of this vigorously productive
landscape from a tourist perspective.
Weather
Theres a popular saying in the Bakken that there are three seasons: snow, mud, and
dust. Technically, the weather is impacted by the regions mid-continent location with cold
winters and hot summers; indeed, North Dakota experiences some of the widest variety of
weather in the United States. Few places in the world host temperature extremes from well
below zero to over 100 F. Sitting at the geographic center of North America, the
continental climate weather patterns can be wickedly unpredictable with Alberta Clippers
(winter storms characterized by sudden drops in temperature and sharp winds), possible in
either spring or fall.
Winters often bring the dry, bright sunshine of the Arctic dessert, with the drama of
sparkling bright clean snow and brutally crisp temperatures lingering below 0 F for weeks on
end. Between the intensely sunny days, travel can be far more difficult and dangerous as
blizzards are not unusual and low temperatures make any time outside without good winter
clothing risky. Traveling in the winter should not be done without a winter weather kit in the
vehicle including extra clothing and food, and appropriate safety gear. If you drive a diesel
vehicle, be sure to fill up with winter blend diesel fuel or #1 diesel which has a significantly
lower gelling temperature than traditional blends. Many drivers will leave their diesel vehicles
running overnight to prevent problems with the fuel lines.
Springtime has its challenges as well. Spring tends to come rather late to the northern
plains with the last frost most frequently occurring in mid-May. Spring thaws and rains can
make unpaved and unimproved roads difficult for travel and cover the entire region with a
thin layer of rich brown mud. July, August, and September provide the easiest months for
touring. Most of the mud has dried up and the first frost usually holds off until the last
weeks of September. The temperature in the summer months can be quite warm, but
humidity tends to be rather low, evenings are cool, and at 48 latitude, daylight is plentiful.
Rural roads can be dusty, but many are watered regularly, and while road construction work
is almost inevitable during the short season when it is possible, it is an exciting time to visit
the Bakken.
Finally, no discussion of Bakken weather is complete without some mention of the wind.
The Bakken, like most of North Dakota, is windy. Winter, spring, summer, and fall are all
windy. Situated in the middle of the continent, impacted by continental divides and major
headwaters, the wind primarily gusts west from across the Rockies, but it also pounds down
from the Arctic in the north, blusters east from the Great Lakes, and sweeps humid winds
south from the Gulf of Mexico travelling up the Mississippi and the Missouri. The wind
carries dust in the summer, rain in the spring and fall, and snow in the winter.
Food
Food options in the oil patch change seasonally with plenty of options served at food
trucks. These trucks offer a surprising range of fares including the ubiquitous burgers, fries,
and burritos, to Cajun and other southern cooking brought north by the large number of oil
workers from Gulf of Mexico. one particularly interesting feature of food in the patch is its
southern inflection. Brisket, fried chicken, biscuits, and barbecue of various descriptions can
show up on menus across the region. Be warned, your meal is not likely to be cheap.
Stopping where you see a line of idling semis or pickup trucks is often the best available
review in the ephemeral restaurant scene. Truck stops are another food option with most
offering hot food and various frozen entrees. The continuous nature of activity in the patch
makes these truck stops appealing places for quick lunches on the go between sites. For a
cheaper meal and some local color, visit the main street of any of the larger towns in the
region and enjoy some conversation with your coffee and patty melt. Tioga, Watford City,
Crosby, and Alexander have decent diners, and Williston has a growing range of chain
restaurants as well as some decent eats with a more regional flavor and ambiance.
Clothing
When traveling in the Bakken it is essential to dress the part. Most of the necessary gear
can be purchased at the Home of Economy in Minot, Williston, or Watford City (or, in a
pinch, at various truck stops throughout the patch). To some extent your dress will depend
on whether you have made arrangements to visit working sites, or simply plan to take on the
dramatic scenery. In either case, a sturdy pair of boots are the best start to any Bakken outfit.
Visits to work sites generally require steel toe books with solid, composite, or steel shanks
and even the casual tourist might consider rugged looking footwear to blend in with the hard
working population of the patch. Many longtime residents of the Northern Plains swear by
Red Wing boots produced by Red Wing Shoes in either their Red Wing, Minnesota or
Potosi, Missouri plants. There are now Red Wing stores in Watford City and Williston.
Carhartt or similarly ruggedized pants, shirts, and jackets are the order of the day for
outwear. For extra authenticity consider FR rated clothing which is fire retardant and
required by many worksites. Most folks dress in layers, even in the summer, to accommodate
the cool mornings and sometimes sweltering afternoons. A solid colored hoodie or
hooded sweatshirt is an appealing and appropriate option for touring the Bakken. A
common accessory especially among truck drivers, is an SO2 detector. Sulfur dioxide is a
highly toxic gas associated with oil extraction and natural gas processing that can pool
dangerously in natural depressions. Workers in the Bakken who spend extended periods of
time around wells, pipelines, and other places where various gases are present, wear SO2
detectors as a safety precaution.
One interesting aspect of Bakken dress is the appearance of American flags on shoulder
patches of coveralls, along with other heavy-duty clothing bearing corporate logos. This
practice almost certainly derived from the military and perhaps served to identify American
employees of oil companies and contractors while working in difficult political environments
in the Middle East and Africa. It also speaks to the growing conflation of the military and
extractive industries in the U.S. Many workers in the Bakken live in barrack-style camps and
serve fixed length tours in the region. The companies themselves often couch their work in
the patriotic language of energy independence. Michigan-based Carhartt and Minnesotabased Red Wing boots present an Americanized wardrobe appropriate for the region.
In North Dakota, the region west of the Missouri river is cowboy hat country. While the
workers who have streamed to the Bakken come from all over the country, many residents
of western North Dakota who consider themselves Westerners will wear traditional cowboystyle hats without irony. Many folks in the Bakken, however, do not associate with the
American west in particular, and remain more at home with traditional baseball-style hats.
Of course, hardhats are required on worksites, with the hard plastic shells presenting further
opportunity for self-expression in an environment where that can be otherwise challenging.
Bakken in segments, though recent technology enables the towers to walk to nearby sites.
With the slowdown in drilling in 2015
The next step to bring a Bakken well into production is fracking. This involves forcing a
combination of water and chemicals down into a well at such immense pressure that the
surrounding rock cracks and fractures. Once the rock is fractured, pumps force either sand
or a synthetic proppant down into the still-pressurized well. The proppant travels down the
well suspended in a viscous gell which flows into the cracks in the rocks. A chemical is then
added that causes the gell to dissipate leaving behind the proppant to keep the cracks in the
rock open. Oil and gas flow through these fissures. This process can be repeated multiple
times in a well with a series of pressure sensitive valves separating the length of horizontal
pipe into sections that can be fractured individually. It is this multiple fracking that made the
Bakken particularly productive.
The best visual indicators of active fracking at a well are the rows of frack tanks
aligned along the gravel pad surrounding the well hole. These square tanks with a single set
of wheels at their rear carry water and chemicals to the well site. Depending on the well, this
might involve hundreds of tanks being transported and removed from the fracking site
requiring numerous truck drivers. The amount of fluid needed to frack a well in the Bakken
varies significantly, with some wells requiring millions of gallons of water to frack. Once
fracking begins, the water used in the process is contaminated both with fracking chemicals,
many of which are trade secrets, and various naturally occurring salts and radioactive rocks
present deep beneath the earth. Oil companies dispose of this contaminated, or, or, in the
language of the state of North Dakota, produced water, by injecting it back into the ground at
salt-water or waste-water disposal wells. These wells are meant to prevent the chemical- and
salt-laden water from contaminating the surface of the ground or fresh water aquifers.
Once the well is fracked, oil runs free for varying periods of time, but then pumps are
installed that continue to draw the oil from the fractured rock to the surface of the ground.
The most common form of well pump in the Bakken are traditional pump-jacks which look
like nodding donkeys. With the oil typically comes natural gas, particularly methane. In some
cases, this is burned off at the pump site resulting in dramatic flares. In other cases, pipelines
take this gas to a compression station and then a refinery. Like any mechanical process,
every oil well requires various kinds of maintenance to ensure its continued output. Filling
this role are the workover rigs and their crewsthe bulldogs of the Bakkenwho arrive to
repair broken pieces, deal with accumulations of non-oil fluid, and other maintenance
functions. Workover rigs look like small drilling rigs with tall tower designed to
accommodate the long lengths of casing inserted or removed from the wells. With the
exception of the ongoing maintenance of the workover rigs, most of the activity around a
well is limited to the mechanical bobbing of the well pump itself.
The drilling, fracking, and pump preparation take a tremendous amount of manpower
from teams responsible for rigging the well, fracking it, and maintaining the electrical and
hydraulic systems, to the truck drivers who bring equipment, fluids, and structures to the
site. According to the North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources, the typical well
requires over 1200 truckloads of gear and involves over 400 different jobs.
The drilling and fracking process can often be viewed from Bakken roads. It is an
industrial treat to see a convoy of trucks pulling frack tanks down rural roads or lines of
these tanks arranged in trucking yards waiting to be deployed. Pump trucks are another
exciting sight on North Dakota highways. These trucks carry large pumps, massive engines
that propel fracking fluids deep beneath the earth.
Casselton, North Dakota, near Fargo, reinforced public fears about moving Bakken oil by
rail. Pipelines have not been without their problems, with a major spill from a Tesoro
pipeline in September 2013 dumping close to a million gallons of oil in a wheat field near
Tiogaone of the largest onshore spills in U.S. history. Finally, the movement of oil
through the Bakken has created problems with the traditional agricultural economy in the
region. Long transportation delays brought about by the increase in Bakken oil traffic have
plugged grain elevators, hampered the delivery of fertilizers, caused farmers to invest in
additional storage, and in some cases left piles of grain and hay to remain in fields. The
development of rail infrastructure, such as unit yards and terminals for moving equipment
into the region and oil out, and pipelines to transport crude and natural gas has lagged
behind production. The ongoing development of sufficient infrastructure will depend on
stable, high prices of oil, factors that are never guaranteed in the boom-bust cycles of
extractive industries.
Finally, residents of the Bakken have complained about the noise pollution, air pollution,
and light pollution near drill rigs. Because some farmers do not own mineral rights that
correspond with the surface rights, they often find themselves at odds with oil companies.
Despite laws that require that both surface and mineral rights owners respect each others
rights of access and use, there continue to be disputes over the interpretation of these laws
and the willingness of large corporate holders of mineral rights to respect surface rights
holders.
Social Concerns
Perhaps equal to environmental concerns are the social concerns involving not only
rapid population growth in Western North Dakota but also the arrival of people who intend
only to live in the region for a short period of time. The larger population has made crime
more visible, put pressure on social services, and upset the small-town life style enjoyed by
many long-time residents. The media has paid particular attention to the rise in drug related
crime in the Bakken as well as prostitution, human trafficking, and violence against women.
Residents have complained about the increase in petty-theft and a general feeling of
insecurity. Some of the rhetoric about crime and violence in the Bakken evokes images of
the Wild West or even 19th century stories of industrial districts where working class men
labored to enter the middle class. Media coverage aside, there is no doubt that many small
communities have struggled to adapt to the rapidly changing situation in the Bakken and
some have been critical of the response from the state of North Dakota for being slow to
help small towns facing unprecedented challenges.
Perhaps the best known of these social challenges was the increase in the cost of living in
Bakken communities. Rents in Williston, Dickinson, and Watford City equaled those in
major urban areas like New York and Los Angeles. The scarcity of labor drove prices up for
goods throughout the patch and incited claims of price gouging and profiteering at the
expense of new arrivals. The rising cost of living made it difficult for older residents on fixed
incomes or state employees with salaries based on pre-boom cost of living calculations to
survive in the Bakken. As a result, communities struggled to retain and attract teachers,
social service providers, and police needed to face the challenges of the boom.
The rapid expansion of short-term housing initially helped communities manage the
influx in workers to the reason. The building of permanent home and apartments in the
cities of Williston and Watford City gained momentum just as the price of began to decline.
This has led to Williston to implement a man camp ban in the city beginning in June 2016
in an effort to move more of the workforce into permanent residences. Watford City has a
massive inventory of newly built, but vacant homes and apartments that speak to the
challenges of providing housing amidst the vagaries of the global economy.
Working in the Bakken has proven to be hazardous as the number of workplace injuries
outpaces the national average by a significant margin. The use of heavy equipment, the
amount of traffic on the roads, and the long hours add to the intrinsic risks of working
around flammable and dangerous chemicals. There are various claims about the dangerrelated rankings of different occupations, and these are often either anecdotal or based on
very specific factors. In this context, it is worth noting that Department of Labor statistics
count truck drivers and construction laborers among the three occupations (along with
farming) with the highest fatality counts and rates.8 When one couples those occupations
which describe much of the work in the oil patchwith the additional risks related to the
petroleum industry, the unavoidable reality is that this is hazardous work. Navigating the
Bakkens highways, byways, and back roads will likely provide opportunity to witness some
of these risks. The roadside memorials to both local residents and newcomers who have died
are a reminder of the risks of moving through a region that has profound similarities to an
industrial site. Adventurers are forewarned!
Political Concerns
The geography of the Bakken boom has exacerbated political tensions between the
western and eastern parts of the state. Traditionally the eastern part of the state, particularly
the fertile, Red River Valley is the home to most of North Dakotas population in the cities
of Fargo and Grand Forks. The western part of the state, in contrast, is more rural, less
densely populated, and generally had less political and economic power. The rapid growth of
oil production in the Bakken has tipped the economic balance toward the western counties
and legislative districts and forced the entire state to critically examine the allocation of funds
for education, infrastructure, and other daily needs. These political compromises do not
come easy even in a legislature dominated by a single political party.
Guy Toscano, Dangerous Jobs, Compensation and Working Conditions 2 (1997): 57-60.
Disputes over the taxing of oil production have also created rancorous debates in
political circles. The desire to create a political and economic culture friendly to extractive
industry has led the state to maintain a gross production tax of 5% per well. More
controversial, however, is the extraction tax of around 10% but contained triggers to drop
lower when the price of oil declined on global markets. While times were good, even the
modest production and extraction tax generated substantial revenues for the state, and
allowed North Dakota to fortify a substantial Legacy Fund that can not be spent until
June 30, 2017. In January 2016 this funds balance was nearly $3.5 Billion. The drop in oil
prices since 2014 has forced the state to adjust its revenue projections and cut funding to
institutions and services across the state. Since the North Dakota legislature meets only every
two years, many of the political conflicts relating to the drop in oil prices since 2015 remain
unresolved.
Further Reading
There is an immense body of popular literature on the North Dakota oil boom, fracking,
and rural life making it difficult to know to start. This work was largely inspired by the
Works Progress Administrations Federal Writers Project Guide to North Dakota: The
Northern Prairie State (1938), which leads tourists and travelers through the largely agricultural
North Dakota landscape of the late 1930s.9 Elwyn B. Robinsons magisterial History of North
Dakota (1966) is also required reading although his research concludes amid the first North
Dakota oil boom.10 Much of his analysis of that boom derives from the 1962 M.A. Thesis of
Dominic Schaff who diligently compiled newspaper articles, geological reports, and industry
statements from the first decade of the first boom; more recently Clarence Herz 2013 M.A.
Thesis from North Dakota State University provides a history of the early days for oil
exploration in the state.11 John P. Bluemles The 50th Anniversary of the Discovery of Oil in North
Dakota, published by the North Dakota Geological Survey in 2001, provides geological and
historical perspectives on the first two booms.12 Kimberly Porters North Dakota: 1960 to the
Millennium appeared in 2009 and catches the first years of the most recent boom.13
For perspectives on North Dakotas landscape prior to the boom, you could do far
worse than looking toward Kathleen Norriss 2001 book, Dakota: A Spiritual Geography which
has exerted a substantial impact on how people have understood the state as a landscape.14
Troy Larsons and Terry Hinnenkamps three volume photo essays on Ghosts of North Dakota
provides a dramatic if romanticized image of the states non-industrial landscape.15 Richard
Edwards, Natives of a Dry Place: Stories of Dakota Before the Oil Boom and Debra Marquart, The
Horizontal World: Growing up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere. A Memoir offer compelling views of
life in North Dakota before the most recent boom.16
The web provides a vast quantity of information on the Bakken oil boom and western
North Dakota. Alex Prudhommes 2014 book titled Hydrofracking in Oxfords Everything You
Need to Know series serves as an accessible start to the technologies and controversies around
Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration for the State of North Dakota. North
Dakota: The Northern Prairie State. (Fargo, ND: Knight Print Co., 1938).
10 E. Robinson, History of North Dakota. (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1966).
11 C. Herz, Petroleum Exploration History in North Dakota to 1951. Unpublished M.A. Thesis.
North Dakota State University. Fargo, ND. 2013; D. Schaff, The History of the North Dakota Oil
Industry, Unpublished M.A. Thesis. University of North Dakota. Grand Forks, ND. 1962.
12 P. Bluemle, The 50th Anniversary of the Discovery of Oil in North Dakota. (Bismarck, ND: North Dakota
Geological Survey, 2001).
13 K. Porter, North Dakota: 1960 to the Millennium. (Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt Publishing 2009).
14 K. Norris, Dakota: A Spiritual Geography. (New York: Ticknor and Fields, 1993).
15 T. Larson and T. Hinnenkamp, Ghosts of North Dakota: North Dakotas Ghost Towns and Abandoned
Places. Vols. 1-3. (Fargo, ND: Sonic Tremor Media, 2013).
16 Richard Edwards, Natives of a Dry Place: Stories of Dakota Before the Oil Boom (Pierre, SD: South
Dakota Historical Society Press, 2015); Debra Marquart, The Horizontal World: Growing up Wild in the
Middle of Nowhere. A Memoir. (New York: Counterpoint Books, 2006).
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fracking globally.17 The state provides interactive maps locating nearly every well in the
Bakken and including their horizontal legs.18 The federal government provides a somewhat
less elegant county-by-county map of gas and oil pipelines through the state.19 Fracfocus
provides information on particular wells that have undergone hydraulic fracturing during the
recent boom, but relies on companies to report their procedure and process.20 The best way
to learn about a particular well is to locate the well using North Dakotas oil and gas map
and then referencing the well, by name, on the Fracfocus page. The North Dakota
Petroleum Council, a statewide advocacy group for Bakken businesses, has an informative
website providing the perspective of industry issues related to the boom.21 Finally, the
Million Dollar Way blog provides multiple, daily updates on the oil industry in the Bakken
including detailed discussion of particular wells, oil fields, and corporate strategies.22 The
blog is leavened with political and, less frequently, pop culture commentary.
For more personal views of the oil boom, Lisa Peters memoir, Fractured Land, provides
an intimate portrait of a familys history as the backdrop for the authors struggle to come to
terms with profits from oil leases arranged by her late father.23 Russell Golds very accessible
book on fracking, The Boom: How Fracking Ignited the American Energy Revolution and Changed the
World (2014) starts with a similar story about a familys experience with gas industry in
Pennsylvania before telling the story of fracking and its role in the US energy industry.24
Taylor Brorbys and Stefanie Trouts collection of essays, poems, and non-fiction on
fracking, titled Fracture, has several contributions with a North Dakota focus.25 Bill Caraher
and Kyle Conway has recently published an edited volume, The Bakken Goes Boom: Oil and the
Changing Geographies of Western North Dakota, which presents a series of scholarly and creative
works focused specifically on the Bakken.26
There are several documentary films that deal with the Bakken. The most famous is
perhaps Jesse Mosss The Overnighters which won a Special Jury Award at the 2014 Sundance
Film Festival. Of note are North Dakota entries into this increasingly crowded field: Prairie
Public Media has released a documentary called Faces of the Boom, and Black Gold Boom: How
Oil Changed North Dakota grew from a series of radio documentaries to web and TV
A. Prudhomme, Hydrofracking. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).
North Dakota Oil and Gas: ArcIMS Viewer. Accessed February 15, 2016
https://www.dmr.nd.gov/OaGIMS/viewer.htm.
19 National Pipeline Mapping System. Accessed February 15, 2016.
https://www.npms.phmsa.dot.gov/
20 FracFocus: Chemical Disclosure Registry. Accessed February 15, 2016. https://fracfocus.org.
21 North Dakota Petroleum Council. Accessed February 15, 2016. https://www.ndoil.org
22 The Million Dollar Way. Accessed February 15, 2016. http://themilliondollarway.blogspot.com/
23 Peters, Fractured Land.
24 Gold, The Boom.
25 T. Brorby and S. Trout, Fracture: Essays, Poems, and Stories on Fracking in America. North Liberty,
Iowa: Ice Cube Books, 2016).
26 W. Caraher and K. Conway, The Bakken Goes Boom: Oil and the Changing Geographies of Western North
Dakota. (Grand Forks, ND: The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota 2016).
17
18
Bob Dambach and Wayne Gudmundson, Faces of the Oil Patch. 2012. Fargo, ND: Prairie Public
Broadcasting; Todd Melby, Black Gold Boom: How Oil Changed North Dakota. 2012. AIR and
Prairie Public Radio. Accessed February 15, 2016. http://blackgoldboom.com; Oil Patch Dispatches.
Accessed February 15, 2016. http://oilpatchdispatch.areavoices.com/
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