Unprecedented Boom Has Jobs Looking for People in North Dakota

Hydraulic fracturing and the oil play called the Bakken Formation. At FoxNews.com:

While most of the country is still mired in a troubled economy, North Dakota is riding an unprecedented boom that has jobs looking for people, rather than the other way around.

 

"And largely that's driven by the oil play in what we call the Bakken Formation," Lynn Helms, Director of North Dakota Dept. of Natural Resources explains.

 

"We're estimating now about 18,000 square miles of western North Dakota, another 6,000 square miles in Montana, Saskatchewan and Manitoba that is mature oil-source rock. It can be drilled up almost (like) an oil-producing factory. We did not drill a single dry hole in the last year-and-a-half," she said. 

 

New technology called hydraulic fracturing has enabled oil companies to drill for previously inaccessible reserves trapped inside shale formations. Experts estimate the fracking method, though controversial, will provide access to an astounding two billion barrels of oil in the Bakken field.

 

"We're very confident that we've got a twenty year oil boom ahead of us," Helms says. "And that's driving tens of thousands of jobs. I think right now we're estimating 35,000 jobs in direct employment. People actually out there working. And there's about another 18,000 jobs that are looking for somebody to fill"...

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