The sames lies are being told in ND that were told to all the people in the fracking states. “There are jobs, jobs, jobs!”

Except that its bullshit.

Very few locals were hired by any drillers here in western PA. And now that the drilling is nearly done in this area, they either fire what locals they hired (Range resc. Chessappeake ect) or tell them they must pack up and come with them to KY or OH if they still want a job.

The ironic part is that for all this rape of the countryside, they are extracting a relatively small amount of oil and gas. The companies have known these small amounts have been under the ground for some 60 years now, but they never went after them because they were too busy picking the low hanging fruit. Well, that fruit is gone. Now they are spending huge amounts of cash to pick up the crumbs that are left. By most estimates there is only about 20 years worth of gas in the sacred “marcellus” shale, and yes only about 10 to 15 years of oil in ND and montana.

We are practicing a “scorched Earth” policy. Inside of 30 years our planet is going to resemble a set on some old post apocolyptic film from the seventies.

You know, I actually rode a bicycle across ND and, for the most part the people there were kind and generous folk…always happy to lend a hand…..but there’s something very flawed in human nature that allows us to be seduced by profit and the illusion of security. Grokker, in the end ND will, indeed, be destroyed and the citizens of that state will be forced to bear the cost of the inevitable rape of the land, air and water…...In the end the “job creators” will get what they want and the jobs will not have amounted to a hill of beans on the balance sheet.

Sounds like hell on earth to me. By the time all of that oil runs out, and it will inside of ten years, North Dakota will look like a smoking swiss cheese crater useless for any other purpose whatsoever.

I remember passing through Williston, ND some years ago (on another adventure). It had to be one of the most unfriendly places I’ve ever encountered in the U.S. (except perhaps Gillette, WY which ranks at the top of unfriendliness).

Interestingly, I worked with a client who spent time at one of those “man camps” last year. Basically, he told me it was typical of any “gold rush” environment: mean, nasty, brutish, bullying, angry…...kind of describes what our whole country is going to be in the not-so-distant-future.