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To: Titus-Maximus
"The motels are sold out for years, workers are sleeping in their cars. Some roughnecks are making $100K per year and they need more people as more drilling continues. Workers are coming from all over the country."

The housing inconvenience is strictly temporary. The permanent structures that will result from the influx of people and money will last a LOT longer. Especially if local governments (at all levels) SAVE some of that revenue, as Alaska has done (and Louisiana, my home state, failed to do).

19 posted on 11/26/2011 10:26:13 AM PST by Wonder Warthog
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To: Wonder Warthog

Ever been in a ghost town in the west?

Ever wonder why those structures were abandoned?

Because when these local economies are based on these resource booms... when the oil/gas/gold/silver/etc runs out... it doesn’t much matter whether the local politicians were smart and saved for a rainy day. The economy goes down and the population implodes with the resource depletion.

Best example I can give you is Eureka, NV. Small town (and county) that has been run very prudently for decades every time a wave of mining comes through an brings in a fresh injection of money. They have no debt, they’re so fat with tax funds that the state of Nevada wants to rob their school fund.

The population is only about 700, with moly mining it might go up to about 1500 for a while. When the moly mine north of town is depleted (or the gold at Ruby Hill runs out first), the population, it will go back down to 500 people or so, and there will be lots of unoccupied housing, just as there was when gold was under $300/oz. The local economy reverts to farming, ranching and tourism during hunting season, and that’s about it.

If I were in those areas of North Dakota, I’d be telling the county government to not allow a housing boom to take off... because when the oil development is done, they could implode their local real estate market with the left over housing.

In these situations, the mining/oil companies and counties have found it better to set up a man camp, pull in the groady trailers, which can then be hauled right back out when the boom is inevitably over.


27 posted on 11/26/2011 10:41:53 AM PST by NVDave
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To: Wonder Warthog

Except that money in Alaska comes from State land, and the oil in ND is on PRIVATE land, something very rare in Alaksa.


63 posted on 11/26/2011 8:37:24 PM PST by ASOC (What are you doing now that Mexico has become OUR Chechnya?)
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