The Bakken and the Boom That Rewired the West

The geologists had known about the Bakken Formation since the nineteen fifties. A vast shelf of shale rock running beneath northwestern North Dakota and into Montana and Saskatchewan, it held enormous quantities of oil, but the oil was locked inside the rock itself, not pooled in easy reservoir pockets that a conventional drill could tap. For fifty years the Bakken was considered interesting but inaccessible.

Then two technologies converged: horizontal drilling, which allows a well to turn ninety degrees underground and run parallel to a rock formation for a mile or more, and hydraulic fracturing, which injects high-pressure water and sand into the shale to crack it and release the oil. By the late two thousands those techniques were mature and oil prices were high enough to justify the expense. The result was one of the fastest resource booms in American history.

Between two thousand five and two thousand fourteen, North Dakota's oil production increased roughly eleven times. The state's population grew by tens of thousands. Williston, a small city in the northwest corner of the state, became one of the most expensive rental markets in the country.

Man camps, temporary housing compounds for drilling workers, appeared across the prairies. Traffic accidents, crime, and infrastructure strain all rose sharply. The state that had been slowly losing population for decades suddenly needed more of everything.

The boom collapsed with oil prices in two thousand fifteen and partially recovered. What it left behind is complicated: higher state revenues, significant royalty income for some landowners including several tribal members at Fort Berthold, contaminated water sources from spills and disposal wells, a changed relationship between the flat northwestern prairies and the global energy market. The Bakken is still producing.

The question of what it costs is still being calculated.