ModeShift - Part 41

North Dakota Oil Boom Like Air Ambulance Flying In Storm

by Keith SchneiderJanuary 4, 2012February 2, 20120

The day after Christmas, Scott Terrell, a painter and carpenter from Coeur d’Alene, Idaho turned 58. Never has he felt the weight and wear of his years so acutely. Last August Terrell joined the army of oilfield mercenaries that are rapidly converting great stretches of North Dakota, Montana, South Dakota and Wyoming into the most productive fossil fuel development zone in U.S. history. He quickly landed a job driving a Volvo haul truck on a …

North Dakota’s Oil Boom Leads U.S. Out of Recession

by Keith SchneiderJanuary 1, 2012February 1, 20131

Sunday evening, December 2011, Amtrakâ€™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 nationâ€™s oil-producing states, the sound of Williston is diesel engines. The scent is diesel …

Great Plains Bakken Riches Describe New Wealth, New Risk

by Keith SchneiderDecember 27, 2011March 21, 20120

GLENDIVE, MT — Myrna Quale and Laura Glueckert own and manageÂ The Enchanted Room here in this Dawson County town of 4,700 residents close by the border with North Dakota. In the last nine months, they said in an interview, business in their W. Towne Street fabric and floral gifts store has picked up 15 to 20Â percent, “and we had a good business to start with,” said Quale. “I view it as a positive …

Bakken and Other Big Oil and Gas Plays Produced 200,000 New Jobs Since 2005

by Keith SchneiderDecember 23, 2011March 21, 20121

WILLISTON, N.D. — A pad of ice four inches thick greeted Ron Ivory on a clear and cold December morning at the busy water depot south of town. Ivory is 47 years old, a stocky and bearded truck driver from Vernal, Utah, with 23 years in the business. He’s been in North Dakota two weeks, working 14 hour days and earning $25 an hour hauling fresh water, 130 barrels a load, to oil production sites. …

Is American Energy Exploration and Production Breaking the Great Recession?

by Keith SchneiderDecember 22, 2011December 23, 20111

WILLISTON, ND — The Saturday morning earlier this month that Scott Terrell and I had breakfast at Gramma Sharon’s Family Restaurant, every seat was taken by roughnecks and drivers fueling up before heading out to work this state’s giant oil patch. The line of customers waiting to pay their bills was so long I did something I rarely do on reporting trips. I left cash on the table and utterly violated the ethos expressed on …

Bakken Oil Wells Surround North Dakota National Park

by Keith SchneiderDecember 21, 2011December 22, 20110

MEDORA, ND — Buck Hill is one of the tallest points in Theodore Roosevelt National Park, which spreads across more than 70,000 acres of grass and tight canyons where North Dakota meets South Dakota and Montana. Several weeks ago Valerie Naylor, the park superintendent, hiked to the summit and counted six oil drilling platforms within eyesight. In the next few months more rigs will surround the park’s boundaries. With them will come open waste pits …

Boom in Bakken Oil Play, and Elsewhere Starting to Drive U.S. Economy

by Keith SchneiderDecember 20, 2011January 18, 20120

WILLISTON, ND — After dark beyond Williston’s last lit living room, and heading east on state highway 1804, North Dakota’s landscape turns alien. Steel towers of active oil drilling rigs, flooded by lights as bright as a sports stadium, flank every steep rise. The orange flare gas fires, like 20-foot birthday flames, break the pitch dark of every plunge into deep valleys. The sound of ceaseless prairie winds, and big trucks hauling water and drilling …

In North Dakota’s Bakken Oil Field, The Smell of Diesel, the Sound of Trucks

by Keith SchneiderDecember 19, 2011March 8, 20125

WILLISTON, ND — Past midnight at the station platform in Spokane, 850 miles east of this riotous Great Plains city riding the lashing tail of an oil drilling dragon, the roustabouts and heavy equipment operators kiss wives and girlfriends, then reluctantly board Amtrak’s Empire Builder. Twenty-one day shifts, 14 hours a day, in wind-whipped cold and in a perilous work zone that can maim or kill has a way of quelling enthusiasm — even when …

Uptown As Cleveland’s Downtown in New York Times

by Keith SchneiderNovember 29, 2011May 22, 20140

The New York Times today published my latest piece on places that are doing many of the right things to prosper and thrive in the 21st century. In this case it’s the collaboration between city officials, developers, institutions, universities, foundations, and bankers in Cleveland to produce the new Uptown District along Euclid Avenue. In the last couple of months I’ve reported on how Toledo is recruiting Chinese investment capital to redevelop its Maumee River waterfront. …

Oil Production Soars, Prices Fall, Water Contest Grows

by Keith SchneiderNovember 27, 2011November 27, 20110

The Department of Energy earlier thisÂ month reported that crude oil production in the United States climbed to 5.88 million barrels per day, the most since 1998. Meanwhile the share of oil demand taken up by imports is declining. After nearly three decades of steadily falling domestic production, the U.S. is now in the midst of an oil boom that is in its third straight year, with no sign of abating. Last night on the …