Tag: Bakken

Dickinson undergoing fast, amazing changes

Dickinson is a community changing so rapidly it’s almost to the point where it’s difficult to know exactly what is going where. Seemingly every day, a new building or business pops up.

The city has never been stagnant, however. In my short lifetime, I’ve seen a variety of changes.

I remember eating at Skippers and Sergios, going to Anfinsons for farm — and, as a kid, toy — needs, while shopping for groceries at Buttrey’s and going to Woolworths downtown, where my prime enjoyment came from getting to ride the escalator.

We’ve changed so rapidly over the past two-and-a-half decades that it’s amazing to sit back and realize that most of the businesses in town have held steady through one oil boom and bust, and now many are thriving like never before thanks to the latest boom.

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Growing trash problems can be fixed

An abandoned mattress sits in a ditch on the side of the road that leads to the south side of Patterson Lake outside of Dickinson on Monday. Littering and the abandonment of big items is becoming more of an issue in the Dickinson area, one of many impacts being felt because of the oil boom.

Trash and littering are becoming hot topics in western North Dakota. Just about anywhere you look, there are plastic bags and paper stuck in fences and sitting in ditches, or beer cans and bottles that have been dropped in random spots.

McKenzie and Williams counties in the much busier northern portion of the Oil Patch have been fighting an increasingly difficult bout to maintain clean prairies and cities than we have here in southwest North Dakota.

But don’t rest easy folks. As we see more and more oil activity and population influx, we’re simultaneously going to see a larger wave of trash.

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Rig tour an eye-opening education on oil industry details

Over the last four years, it seems like all conversations in and about North Dakota have centered on oil and the impact it has made on the local landscape, culture and bank accounts.

Countless stories have been written and who knows how many more have yet to play out.
Last Monday, I was fortunate enough to see, smell and touch the source of those stories thanks to a rig tour provided by Whiting Petroleum Corp.

Blaine Hoffmann, Whiting’s superintendent for the Northern Rockies based in Dickinson, accompanied me and two European journalists to a rig southwest of Belfield. My main duty on the tour was to assist and be a photographer for Swiss journalist Charlotte Jacquemart, a business reporter for the New Zurich Times, who is in western North Dakota reporting on the oil boom and hydraulic fracturing.

Now I’ve read a lot about oil and the boom and have had a hand in some stories. But on Monday, I finally got my education.

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