Why is this not all over the news? This is a huge story as it pertains to our national energy security. I’ve yet to see either presidential candidate even mention this. This is a prime example what happens when supply and demand spurns private industry, not the government, to work their magic. An entire town is now revitalized and flourishing due to oil exploration and the discovery of massive reserves. ‘Salt of the earth’ folks are now raking in tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in jobs that have been created by this boom. So whaddya say Mr. Obamessiah? Still think that drilling won’t help anything? Pshaww. Might want to ask the common folks in Stanley, North Dakota.
From CNN:
Stanley, North Dakota, might seem an unlikely boomtown located in the northwest part of the state about 50 miles from the Canadian border. But the town is teeming with activity — all thanks to rich oil deposits sitting deep below the surface.
The town has grown from 1,250 people to more than 1,600 since the start of the year, says Mayor Mike Hynek. The oil has brought better paying jobs, raised real estate values and spawned millionaires.
“Practically everyone is being affected by it,” Hynek says.
It’s not uncommon to hear stories of 20-year-olds with no job experience getting hired to work in the oil fields with starting salaries of $70,000 a year. Gary Dazell makes more than $100,000 a year hauling water to and from the oil fields.
“The oil field has blessed us,” he says.
Then, there are stories like Geving’s where locals suddenly come into a fortune for owning the mineral rights. Geving says he’s amassed so much money that 70 relatives will get sizable sums when he dies.
The town sits in an area known as the Bakken Formation, a vast region below North Dakota, Montana and a portion of Canada that the U.S. Geological Survey says contains between 3 billion and 4.3 billion barrels of oil.
“The continual amount of oil in North Dakota is three times as much as Texas,” says Kevin Frederick, a geologist in the region. “We’re doing as much as we can to try and get it out.”
Mayor Hynek says the region is so flush with oil that it’s nearly impossible for an oil well to come up dry. Standing in the middle of a downtown street, he says, “I’m fairly certain that if they drilled a well here, they’d have oil.”
“There’s oil down there. No doubt about it,” he adds. “They just need to perfect how to get it out.”
It’s always been known there was oil in the region, but it wasn’t always cost effective to drill for it or the technology wasn’t good enough. When oil was cheap overseas, it also was easier for a company to import it, rather than explore for it, experts say. But that’s all changed with high oil prices.
Better drilling technology, some good oil finds in the area and the political push for oil exploration in the United States has spurred the boom here and in smaller nearby towns.
This is American industry and capitalism at its finest, and it didn’t take government bureaucrats or pandering politicians to do it.
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