Free Republic

On Wednesday, April 12, the Williston Police Department of Williston, North Dakota, auctioned off 149 firearms that had been collected over the last couple of decades. From myndnow.com: Hundreds of people attended the Williston Police Department's first gun auction.   In total, 149 guns forfeited to the department through criminal investigations were up for bid. "I used to have a federal firearms license and I used to have a side gun business. If I do stay here, I'm going to do it again and that's why I came here. To get an education," says Gary Silva, an auction attendee....

Joshua D. Brown, 40, of Canton, Ohio, died in the accident May 7 in Williston, Florida, when his car's cameras failed to distinguish the white side of a turning tractor-trailer from a brightly lit sky and didn't automatically activate its brakes, according to government records obtained Thursday. Frank Baressi, 62, the driver of the truck and owner of Okemah Express LLC, said the Tesla driver was "playing Harry Potter on the TV screen" at the time of the crash and driving so quickly that "he went so fast through my trailer I didn't see him." "It was still playing when...

WILLISTON, N.D. – The entire U.S. Williston Basin produced more than 1 million barrels of oil per day in September, driven by another record month of North Dakota oil production. North Dakota produced 931,940 barrels per day, a 2 percent increase over August, according to preliminary numbers released Friday by the Department of Mineral Resources. The U.S. Williston Basin also includes portions of South Dakota, which produced 5,017 barrels per day in September, and Montana, which produced 75,460 barrels per day in August. ... Bakken oil production in North Dakota and Montana is projected to top 1 million barrels of...

Right now you are probably asking yourself: “What would it be like to live in a place with an unemployment rate of 1 percent?” Me, too! So I went to Williston, N.D., to find out. There are certain things that journalists do as a public service because you, the noble reader, are probably not going to do them for yourself — like attending charter revision meetings or reading the autobiography of Tim Pawlenty. Going to Williston is sort of in this category. The people are lovely, but you’re talking about a two-hour drive from Minot. If you did come, however,...

This is a tale of two cities. They have names you may not recognize but which you’ve probably read about in the last few years: Fremont and Williston. Fremont, Calif., is the southernmost city in California’s East Bay, just a few freeway exits from Silicon Valley. It’s not as upscale as Palo Alto or Cupertino, but has its own distinctions. It was the site of the NUMMI plant where General Motors and Toyota collaborated for years but which closed in April 2010. It’s the site of the California School for the Deaf. Politically, it’s Democratic territory: Fremont voted 71 to...

The guy has zero college and walks out of high school and is making 90-grand," said a Williston, N.D., teacher with a master's degree, speaking to The Associated Press about a former student who's working in the Oil Patch. "To me, that seems to be an injustice." Say what? Neither justice nor a degree entitles a person to a higher income. That's one of the fundamental truths of the labor market, and people in Williston and elsewhere should understand why.

WILLISTON, N.D.—With the nearby oil boom draining this city of many of its service workers, businesses here are relying on a cultural-exchange program for foreign college students to keep the local economy humming. More than 500 foreign students—from Thailand, Jamaica and about a dozen other countries—are staffing nearly every hotel, car wash and fast-food place in town, tending to the troops of roughnecks from the oilfields. "Without them, I don't know what we'd do," said Ward Koeser, mayor of this city of 16,000, citing long lines, slow service and limited hours at stores and restaurants before the students arrived. But...

WILLISTON, N.D. (CNNMoney) -- Forget Vegas. Strippers are discovering they can make ten times as much dancing in the oil boomtown of Williston, N.D. Thousands of men have come here seeking high-paying jobs working for the oil companies. And, at the end of the day (or four or five days when they're working on a rig), many of them are looking for some female companionship at one of the town's two strip club's, Whispers or Heartbreakers

APNewsBreak: ND oil patch may double production APNewsBreak: Officials say North Dakota's oil patch poised to double production ap * Share * retweet * Email * Print James Macpherson, Associated Press, On Sunday January 2, 2011, 3:30 pm EST BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) -- Government and industry officials believe North Dakota's oil patch contains more than twice the amount of oil previously estimated and that the state's already record crude production will double within the decade. If the forecast is correct, North Dakota could leapfrog in a few years from the fourth-biggest oil producing state to No. 2, trailing only Texas....

A geologist who estimated the Bakken formation in western North Dakota has far more oil than the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge died before other scientists could authenticate his study. Leigh Price, a scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey, published a study in 1999 that estimates the Bakken shales formation, which underlies much of several western and northwestern counties, may hold up to 400 billion barrels of oil. By comparison, the Arctic refuge oil reserve is estimated at 16 billion barrels. Now, Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., is pushing the federal agency to complete scientific work on Price’s paper as part of...