North Dakota’s Oil Boom Leads U.S. Out of Recession
Sunday evening, December 2011, Amtrak’s eastbound Empire Builder pulls into Williston, North Dakota, a fast-growing northern Great Plains city riding the lashing tail of an oil-drilling dragon. A crowd gathers on the station platform. Men coming. Men going. Big pickups rumble in the parking lot. Four years into a drilling frenzy that has pushed North Dakota to the top of the nation’s oil-producing states, the sound of Williston is diesel engines. The scent is diesel …