Crude-Oil Price Collapse Takes Toll on Williston, North Dakota

Business
North Dakota town was a magnet for job seekers, but now work is scarce

By Russell Gold
Updated March 12, 2015 2:53 p.m. ET
Russell.Gold@wsj.com
russell.gold@wsj.com
@russellgold

WILLISTON, N.D.—As the epicenter of the North American oil boom, this town was a magnet for blue-collar job seekers. ... But the collapse in crude prices means truck-choked Williston is no longer the land of opportunity it was less than a year ago. On Thursday, the state reported its oil output fell 3% in January from an all time-high in December.

“I tried to get in on the oil rigs, but by the time I got here they were laying off,” says Jimmy Sidwell, who arrived in Williston from Atlanta in January. He had figured the oil fields were one of the few remaining places where he could earn a good salary without having a college degree. ... Instead, Mr. Sidwell has been digging ditches and sleeping in motels, hoping that something better will open up. “It’s like everyone is here looking for the pot of gold,” he says.

In 2008, energy companies figured out how to combine hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling to coax crude oil from the Bakken Shale in western North Dakota. That triggered an energy-fueled bonanza.

At North Dakota’s peak in mid-2012, more than 200 rigs were drilling oil wells in the Bakken formation: Williston was the fastest-growing small city in the U.S. from 2011 through 2013, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.