NYT: Oil boom splits tiny town

December 29th, 2011

FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda

BRIAN WILLIAMS:
And as we get under way here tonight, there are protesters spending yet another night outdoors here in
New York
and in the cold in dozens of other
US cities
. Their rallying cry has been there’s nothing for them in this economy, and for a lot of people that means jobs. Well, tonight we have something extraordinary to show you. We’re going to take you to the place where the jobs are. The one place in this
country
where, if you’re
willing
to work and
willing
to move, there is a job waiting for you. They’re hiring so many people so quickly it feels like a different planet there. Tonight
Harry Smith
starts us off with the story of a
Boom Town
that bucks the national trend.

HARRY SMITH reporting:

Western North Dakota
where the
Big Sky country
really begins. A land of austere beauty lush with amber waves of grain, and for the last few decades, a place of dwindling population and few opportunities, until now. It’s an oil boom, the likes of which have not been seen in the
United States
for nearly half a century, a boom so big it’s gushing jobs, by the thousands. At the heart of this boom is
Williston
,
North Dakota
. It’s a confluence of trucks and noise and dust and bustle. It’s a town racing to keep up with the influx of jobs and people. The trucks rumble through like modern buffalo, a stampede that can’t be stopped. Starting salary for
truck drivers
, 80,000 a year. You can make $15 an hour at
Taco John
‘s. In town or in the
oil field
, if you’re
willing
to work, the money is here.

Mr. WARD KOESER:
You know, there’s opportunity here, and that’s what we all need is an opportunity.

SMITH:
Long-time mayor,
Ward Koeser
, says
Williston
‘s fast becoming host to job seekers from all
50 states
. In just five years, its population has nearly doubled to 23,000.

Mr. KOESER:
We’d have two to three thousand job openings here and more come on the scene every day.

SMITH:
Two to three thousand?

Mr. KOESER:
Two to three thousand. Yeah, a lot of jobs get filled every day, but it’s like for every job you fill, another job and a half opens up.

Ms. GRACE KRUGMAN:
Let’s all do this together. Eighteen minus eight, let’s count backwards.

SMITH:
One of those jobs went to
Grace Krugman
from
Colorado
. Until August,
Krugman
was a laid off
school teacher
looking for work for more than a year.

Ms. KRUGMAN:
I didn’t think I’d ever teach again.

SMITH:
When she applied for a job at the now exploding
Williston

school system
, the school basically said, ‘When can you start?’ What was the feeling when they called up and they said, ‘Yes, we have a job for you’?

Ms. KRUGMAN:
I was so excited. It was like, I don’t know how to explain it. I felt like, ‘Maybe I am worth something again.’

SMITH:
Her husband,
Miles
, was employed back in
Colorado
, but his work was slowing down. When they got to
North Dakota
, the licensed electrician felt like he had won the lottery.

Mr. MILES KRUGMAN:
I called four companies, and I received four offers inside of two hours.

SMITH:
This has got to be the only place in
America
that’s like this.

Mr. KRUGMAN:
Yeah. It just feels like a whole different part of the world. It’s the only place in
America
that can be like this right now.

SMITH:
If what
Williston
‘s got is jobs, what it doesn’t have is housing. So this is — this is
home sweet home
?

Ms. KRUGMAN:

Yep.

Mr. KRUGMAN:
This is
home sweet home
.

SMITH:
For now the
Krugmans
are making due with a single bedroom in the basement belonging to the
high school
geometry teacher.

Mr. KRUGMAN:
We’re fortunate.

Ms. KRUGMAN:
Mm-hmm, we are.

Mr. KRUGMAN:
Very fortunate.

SMITH:
Oh, you feel lucky to have it?

Mr. KRUGMAN:
Yes. It’s nice. There’s people living in their cars…

Ms. KRUGMAN:
Mm-hmm.

Mr. KRUGMAN:
…and their campers in
Walmart
.

Mr. GEORGE GREEN:
I keep my clean clothes that I wash over on this side, and these are my dirty clothes.

SMITH:
If
John Steinbeck
were alive, he would be writing about men like
George Green
,
Phil Hazelburg
and
Patrick Parker
.

Mr. PATRICK PARKER:
One of my goals is to make my daughters proud of me. I want to make them proud because I worked a good job for 10 years, and then for it to go away. I just — sorry, sorry. It just gets to me a little bit.

SMITH:

Patrick
hitchhiked all the way from
California
.
Phil
got here in his beat-up van from
Wisconsin
. And
George
scraped up enough money to buy a bus ticket from
Florida
. At night he sleeps in his friend’s truck.

Mr. GREEN:
I always have my toothbrush, toothpaste, and razor that I shave and clean up at
Walmart
in the morning. And it’s — this is home.

SMITH:
Each man
willing
to cross the
country
to regain something he’d lost. How soon do you need to get a job?

Mr. PARKER:
Tomorrow. I got 12 bucks left.

SMITH:
In your pocket?

Mr. PARKER:
Yes, sir. No bank account.

SMITH:
Would it be too far-fetched to say that desperation brought you here?

Mr. PHIL HAZELBURG:
The last couple of years I’ve been laid off, and the unemployment exhausted on me, and I’m turning wrenches part-time for family and friends and that’s not cutting the bills. So, yeah, desperation.

Mr. GREEN:
Ditto. I mean, just want to have a decent life, that’s all.

SMITH:
For those who’ve come to
Williston
with little cash and looking for a fresh start, they might be surprised to find out how much they have in common with a man who may be most responsible for this boom,
Harold Hamm
.
Hamm
is the son of sharecroppers. His company,
Continental Resources
, has more drilling rigs in operation than anyone else in the field known as the
Bakken Formation
.
Hamm
is now a billionaire, several times over.

Mr. HAROLD HAMM:
Our company’s calculation that we did last year for this
Bakken
field up here in both
North Dakota
and
Montana
was 24 billion barrels.

SMITH:

Twenty-four
billion barrels.

Mr. HAMM:

Twenty-four
billion barrels?

SMITH:
Where does that fit in vs. say the
Gulf of Mexico
or the
north slope
of
Alaska
?

Mr. HAMM:
Well,
Prudhoe Bay
, you know, the numbers I’ve seen up there are 13 to 14 billion barrels. So this would be the largest field by far.

SMITH:
Is this as big as anything that’s ever been found in
North America
?

Mr. HAMM:
It’s bigger.

SMITH:

It’s hard
to comprehend just how big this
oil field
really is. Imagine an area the size of
Massachusetts
,
Connecticut
, and
Rhode Island
combined. And when all the drilling is done in a decade or two, there’ll be as many as 50,000 wells out here just like these. The oil has always been here. It’s just been too hard to get out of the ground. Drilling techniques developed in the last few years changed that
big time
.
Ninety-nine
point five percent of all wells drilled in the
Bakken
last year produced oil. Oil here is just that abundant.

Mr. HAMM:
You know, 30,000 jobs up here have been created, 18,000 jobs we’re estimating unfilled.

SMITH:
That’s how many you think are unfilled?

Mr. HAMM:
Unfilled. I have one friend of mine up here that’s looking for 500
truck drivers
right now.

SMITH:
Help wanted doesn’t even begin to describe it. The
Williston
hospital is undergoing a $25 million expansion with 60 job openings. Even the city is hiring, from clerks to cops. Then there’s the housing boom.

Mr. KRUGMAN:
Yeah, it’s on an acre and a quarter.

SMITH:
Acre and a quarter. Our newlyweds,
Grace
and
Miles Krugman
, they just put money down on a
modular home
and hope to move in by
Christmas
. Do you guys feel like pioneers a little bit?

Mr. KRUGMAN:
A little bit. We’re definitely in on the very beginning of this.

SMITH:
As for the men we met in the
parking lot
at
Walmart
,
Phil
found work as a mechanic,
Patrick
as a
truck driver
, and
George
, a job as an entry-level pump operator in the
oil fields
. He’ll be making five times as much money as he did back in
Orlando
. If there was another guy named
George
, and is in exactly the same situation you were then, what would you tell that
George
?

Mr. GREEN:
I’d tell him to step out in faith and — because it’s here. This is opportunity in
Williston
,
North Dakota
.

WILLIAMS:
I’m hearing this, and the numbers don’t sink in. He’s got 500 openings for
truck drivers
now, and they’re 18,000 positions behind, so the question I was asking earlier, it is true, if you’re able-bodied…

SMITH:
Mm-hmm.

WILLIAMS:
…
willing
to move…

SMITH:
Right.

WILLIAMS:
…
willing
to live in some sparse conditions…

SMITH:
Right.

WILLIAMS:
…there’s a job for you in
North Dakota
.

SMITH:
No question. What a lot of guys have done, they’ve set up what they call man camps, and they’re pre-fab housing, sort of like you would see in
Iraq
or
Afghanistan
, that the military uses. And so there may be as many as 10,000 guys living in these man camps throughout the
oil patch
.

WILLIAMS:
So a man camp has to sound like a really good idea to you. I can’t help but notice you’ve brought me something.

SMITH:
We brought a prop.

WILLIAMS:
Yeah.

SMITH:
This is a piece of the
Bakken Formation
.
And I
want you to smell it.

WILLIAMS:
Oh, great.

SMITH:
This is the stuff that’s two miles down.

WILLIAMS:
That smells like oil.

SMITH:
It is. And they frack it, so they pour water into this at high pressure, and the oil just comes oozing out.

WILLIAMS:
By the way, if you’re going to bring me rocks from business trips…

SMITH:
Mm-hmm.

WILLIAMS:
…I hope we send you out to cover a gold mine
one of these days
.

SMITH:
Something that could work like that?

WILLIAMS:
Yeah, that’s a — that’s a handsome piece of rock.

SMITH:
Something from the little lady back home. Yeah, there you go.

WILLIAMS:
But I’m telling you, the discovery of this rock and the oil in it may save the economy in the
Upper Plains
.

SMITH:
Without question, it is a game-changer for US energy interests, in the fact that there’s 24 billion barrels up there. They think it could be even more.

WILLIAMS:

Harry Smith
, thank you, pal. We’re under way. Appreciate it.