North Dakota Oilfields

I've spent the better part of two weeks around or in oil basin country. The basin itself is huge, running into Canada, South Dakota, Montana and most of North Dakota. Apparently the basin is shaped like a basin and for some reason the upper NW part of North Dakota is the easiest place to drill.

Early oil field articles talked about traffic jams and man camps. A couple weeks ago, a “Friends of” newspaper had some official figures saying each wellhead involves 2000 'trucking events'. Then a park host told me Minot was a zoo; traffic was terrible, prices high and shops half empty because they couldn't keep up with demand. His park, he said, made a point of keeping out workers, parks were for vacationing not working. Another told me before the parks starting being careful they had trouble with fights and injuries among workers.

While in the badlands, I saw a band of red that is quite attractive and photographed rather poorly, for me. Well, that layer is clay that baked into brick when a lower layer of low-grade coal burned. That band is fairly close to the surface and is hard enough its used for gravel. My first oilfield encounters were empty parking lots of crushed red gravel with well made red gravel roads leading to them. Nothing else, simply large, empty, very level looking spots anywhere from a half to two or three city blocks in size, I spotted a derrick on the horizon and then dots of flame. And tankers heading south. And pickups loaded with tools. Not much was heading north and those semis seemed to be empty. I went past a line of tankers waiting to park under a makeshift shelter. A huge hand-painted sign by the road read “fresh water for sale”.

Then wells started appearing. Small flat places held an oil pump or two and several tanks that looked very orderly. Larger places had several pumps or rows of tanks and pipes with valves diving in and out of the red gravel. A load of generators went past, a couple loads of trusses and flat-bed pickups with pallets of drinking water. Here and there more hand-made signs appeared with messages like no-semis and this-is-not-the-entrance. Nothing else was in sight, just a sign and a gravel road going someplace behind the hills. The correct roads were pretty easy to spot. Usually they were new and always there were skid marks on the pavement before a turn and gravel strewn pavement where they came back.

A junction. I turned west toward Williston, ND, one of the first oil boom towns. Clusters of trailers start showing up. Some clusters aren't even level. Now there was more traffic, like rural stretches of interstate. Except, these are two lane roads through hills with 65 mph speed limits. The road is in good condition as are all the roads I've been on in ND, and its wide enough with slow lanes on long up hills, but I've seen those skid marks.

The closer I came to town the more wells there were. It seemed like there are pumps and tanks between every hill. They aren't that close together though there will be several along one stretch of road and then a longish break before more appear. Pumps and tanks are non-obtrusive, mostly they're painted a dull tan that matches the local dirt. Some, I'm guessing the land owners' choice, are painted colors; I saw John Deere and red, white and blue. All have small orange wind socks however I neither saw nor heard any plane while there.

I found my park, settled in for the night and starting checking on next stop. Oh oh, long weekend coming up and everything was already full, except my park, and its still too cold to comfortably camp without a little heat so I unhitched, settled a bit more and gave scout its nightly check. All those down hills have badly worn her tires. The last thing I want is to change a tire with semis whizzing by. This is GMC and Ram country and even boat trailers have bigger wheels than scout. I started calling tire companies; one nearly laughed. Finally I called one with a cheerful, friendly first-job voice (It wasn't) who offered to locate one and call back. A minute later I had two tires on order and directions to find the shop. Me and a wheel headed into town.

The landscape started looking bruised. Buildings that look like pole barns have names with welding, fabrication, electrical and construction in their names. All are surrounded by pickups.

Nearly overwhelmed by new is a quiet, older town with all the old-time small-town politeness I've come to respect. I stopped in to a couple of new businesses. Except for one, it really was her first job, everyone was polite. And even the first-timer was helpful.

Naturally there is road construction, one five mile stretch took 15 minutes, that's fast by big city standards though it must seem forever out here. Every other vehicle was a semi. No skid marks in town, no speeding, no turning on yellow.

New businesses are mostly along the highway while sweeping in a rough semi-circle away from it is housing. There are lots of new apartment buildings, many with the look of government housing, and an area of new, wealthy houses that didn't look much better than the apartments. Since 5^th wheels seem to be housing of choice I did see a couple new trailer parks and found a man-camp that looked better than pictures of fema camps.

Even some businesses have put up housing. The meanest looking dwellings I saw were by a small casino outside a man camp. If they were both build around the same time, then any housing was probably good.

Laundromats have designated oilfield-clothes washers. The guys I saw doing laundry were uniformly young, well-built and very polite. License plates said some of these guys came from Georgia and Tennessee. I didn't see anyone as old as I except a couple of bums. Housing is so expense retirees may have sold out and moved away. Ads I read indicated apartments are renting for $1000/bedroom.

I left North Dakota with good feelings. There seems to be a state-wide cheerful optimism that is very appealing. Their roads are uniformly good. Even the obviously older ones have smooth roadbeds with well maintained surfaces and the state appears to be building similarly well-done new roads. Regardless of skid marks driving was not scary, There are a few workers in my park and they are the quietest people here. And ND is spending money to upgrade their historical sites and their state museum.