Bakken Oil Shale

You can belly ache and complain about having no job, but go to North Dakota where you can belly ache all you want, but not about jobs.

At 3.5%, North Dakota has the lowest unemployment rate in the United States at this moment. Compare that with the second highest unemployment rate, which exists in California at 12.1%. What does North Dakota have that California doesn’t? First, it has oil. Second, it has jobs. Third, it has people who really do want to work.

Huge resource

North Dakota is the home of Bakken oil shale, the biggest oil field deposit in the United States besides ANWAR (Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge). The biggest difference between the two is the ban on drilling at ANWAR, whereas Bakken is not only being drilled but also creating jobs, lowering unemployment, sending North Dakota into economic boom, and calling people to work in North Dakota from California.

Huge cut into imports

Of the 19 million barrels of oil this country consumes in a day, only about 10 million barrels are produced in the U.S. While making a scant contribution to current production, Bakken oil shale is projected to produce a million barrels a day by 2020. Nationwide, shale oil fields are estimated to contain 17 billion (with a B) barrels of oil with an estimated contribution to daily consumption by 2 million barrels. That is a very large cut into the need to import from abroad!

Huge opportunity for work

We have heard no belly aches or complaints from the people Bakken shale is catapulting to prosperity.

Harold Hamm, a self-made hard-hat-wearing oil man from Oklahoma and president of Continental Resources, claims personal wealth of $5 billion (with that big B again) derived from development of Bakken oil shale fields. Hamm is doing his part within the industry that has put 30,000 people to work so far, with an estimated 100,000 employed expected within the next eight years.

Huge prospects for new projects

With all of that oil being produced in North Dakota, part of the problem is getting all of that oil out of North Dakota. New pipelines need building badly, and efficient transportation methods seek application now. North Dakota welcomes the infrastructure builders who can help move their oily abundance to markets.

Instead of big-government pork-belly projects building unneeded roads to nowhere, how about big-ticket infrastructure projects for North Dakota? Where is big stimulus money when you need it? North Dakota gets none of it and proud of it.

Restrictions and regulations that would hamper Bakken development are not part of the North Dakota culture. America can rest assured that North Dakota will service the nation’s energy needs just as fast and reliably as it knows how.

Any excuse to squash shale oil will do

North Dakota’s can-do attitude meets contrast in New York and Pennsylvania, states that balk at the production of its oil-rich Marcellus shale. There, the beef is with the production method, fracking, which, of course, is suspected but not proven to taint underground aquafers.

Everybody in North Dakota drinks cool clear North Dakota water and thinks nothing of it.

North Dakota, the new Golden State?

And everybody who wants to work is working. They are running, not walking, to the banks with their paychecks, having earned them with the satisfaction of their own good labors.

Now, if only the weather were better, North Dakota might be the new California, the envy–not the belly ache state–of the entire nation.

Sources:
http://www.bls.gov/web/laus/laumstrk.htm
http://oilshalegas.com/bakkenshale.html http://money.cnn.com/2011/03/04/news/economy/oil_shale_bakken/index.htm


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