…and its evil carbon footprint. Here, courtesy of Mark Perry, writing for AEIdeas, are 10 examples of the destruction demon oil has wrought in North Dakota.
1. … [I]t took almost 58 years for the Bakken oil fields to produce the first 500 million barrels of oil from 1954 to July 2012; and then, thanks to the shale oil revolution, the Bakken oil fields produced the second 500 million barrels in less than two years—from July 2012 to March 2014!
2. In 2004, North Dakota ranked No. 9 for oil production by state, but then thanks to the shale oil boom in the Bakken, the state quickly rose to the No. 6 spot by 2008, the No. 4 spot in 2009, and then surpassed both California and Alaska in 2012 to become America’s second-largest oil producing state, behind only Texas.
3. … At one million barrels of oil every day, the North Dakota Bakken now produces more oil than entire countries like Colombia, Oman, and the UK.
4. In each of the last 69 months since January 2009, North Dakota has recorded the lowest state jobless rate in the country and led the country as the state with the highest rate of private sector job growth. …North Dakota’s jobless rate has been below the US jobless rate by an average of more than 5 percentage points over the last five years. Over the last 12 months through March, private payrolls in North Dakota have grown by…more than twice the national average of 2.25% in private sector job growth.
5. Over the last three years, the jobless rate in Williams County, North Dakota, in the heart of the Bakken oil fields, has averaged less than 1%, and has been as low as 0.7% in six different months.
6. According to the Conference Board, there were more than twice as many advertised online job openings in North Dakota in March (21,900) than there were unemployed workers seeking employment (10,610)…. At the national level…there are more than twice as many unemployed workers (10,486,000) as online advertised job vacancies (4,894,000).
7. The Census Bureau reported recently that three of the five fastest growing micro areas (cities with populations of 10,000 to 50,000) in the country between July 2012 and July 2013 were in North Dakota [including two of the top two].
8. The BEA reported recently that North Dakota led the country last year with the highest growth in state personal income at 7.6%, almost three times the national average of 2.6% growth….
9. North Dakota has boasted a state budget surplus in every year since 2008, when shale oil brought an unprecedented level of new jobs, wealth and prosperity to the state.
10. This might be the most impressive economic fact about North Dakota…: in 2006, North Dakota was America’s 11th poorest state by personal income per person. In just seven years, thanks the shale revolution, the Peace Garden State rose to become the nation’s 2nd most prosperous state in 2013, ranking behind only Connecticut last year for personal income per capita….
Read ’em and weep.