4 ms·

(Grew up in ND, live in SD now) At one time starting wages were $100k/year, but I don't know anyone starting that high nowadays, except maybe strippers. The "

(Grew up in ND, live in SD now) At one time starting wages were $100k/year, but I don't know anyone starting that high nowadays, except maybe strippers. The "man camps" are pretty horrible and most people blow their pay on booze and girls before they leave. It's really depressing.

Steltek 13y ago
Sounds a lot like the Paradox of Plenty [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse]. ND is fixated on the oil industry to the detriment of absolutely everything else. Hell, aren't they just burning all the extracted natural gas because it's basically a distraction from the liquid crude? There was an terribly sad update of the "Earth at Night" satellite image showing ND lit up like a Christmas Tree.
- hueving 13y ago
  > There was an terribly sad update of the "Earth at Night" satellite image showing ND lit up like a Christmas Tree Why is it sad? The light is from lights in towns, etc, not gas fires.
  - thaumasiotes 13y ago
    Parent is presumably rooting for North Korea over South Korea based on the famous nighttime photos. ;)
  - cpeterso 13y ago
    GP might be referring to this NASA satellite image, which the article says are burning gas flares of fracking rigs: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/fracking/10463494/Fracking-lights-up-the-North-Dakota-sky.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/fracking/10463494/Fr...
- w1ntermute 13y ago
  They need to send some people to Norway to learn how it's done: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/99680a04-92a0-11de-b63b-00144feabdc0.html http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/99680a04-92a0-11de-b63b-00144... (Google the URL and click on the link to bypass the paywall, or read it here: http://pastebin.com/055t6hiM http://pastebin.com/055t6hiM).
- 650REDHAIR 13y ago
  From my limited understanding it's not profitable enough to capture and transport the burn off.
  - fennecfoxen 13y ago
    Transport of the gas would itself require either some sort of pipelines, or gas liquefaction and transport via rail. Neither are particularly cheap, and natural gas prices are, for the moment, near all-time lows. (Storage, of course, is wildly implausible. Leaving the gas for extraction later at more profitable prices probably wouldn't be worth the time-value-of-money adjusted profits you could make by immediate extraction.)
- protomyth 13y ago
  They're trying to capture the gas now, ND issued some new rules on it. ND is not just fixated on oil, farming is just as big as ever. Look at the number of crops ND is first or second in the nation at delivering. Lord knows the words this spring will be "flood control" in the east.
- pilom 13y ago
  My understanding was they were extracting natural gas and burning off methane. Methane is much more difficult to transport (because the molecules are so small it leaks out of everything as a gas and its very difficult to get it cold enough to be a liquid). Eventually they'll have methane transport capabilities but for the moment it just gets burned off.
  - mapt 13y ago
    Natural gas is perhaps 80% +- 15% methane. The rest is a variety of gasses, some of which constitute useful fuels in themselves, like propane and butane: these may be incorporated into the finished product (which is why we don't sell it as "methane"), or fractionated out. Historically, one saw 'stranded natural gas' flared from oil wells that produced too little natural gas or were in too remote a place to make a pipeline economical. Compressed natural gas is so low-energy-density that it's rarely economical to transport it outside the context of a pipeline - though this has changed in the last few decades with the adoption of liquified natural gas tanker ships and terminals to serve them; Still, the percentage of the value consumed by transportation is an order of magnitude higher than for oil tankers.
protomyth 13y ago
Welders still get that, truck drivers with some OT. The local towns will probably have the housing in the next year so the camps will be gone. Sewage planning is an amazingly complicated process. Also, the road changes to loop around towns are going to help.
JPKab 13y ago
Yeah, this is very common. It's simple economics: the barrier to entry for the majority of "starting at 100K" jobs was just geography, due to a short supply of workers and a huge demand. Eventually enough workers flood in, the wages drop, and the only people who can get a high starting salary are the highly skilled tradesmen (drill operators, welders, etc) Tie onto that the fact that rents are relatively high due to a housing shortage, and you get a bunch of people living paycheck to paycheck just like they were before.
- protomyth 13y ago
  Skilled vocational workers still make the cash (and drivers for other reasons), but grunts make grunt wages. There are several state grants to get more vocational training, not only for oil but for the extremely short supply of people for infrastructure projects. Due to worker and driver shortages many building projects in the east are delayed or taking much longer than thought.
  - JPKab 13y ago
    Yep. We can thank our idiot high school guidance counselors in the US for this. If you are a high school student who is remotely responsible and productive, you are pushed to go to college for a "good job" and are actively dissuaded from any alternative except the military. Slacker? Stoner? Bad grades? Well ok then, maybe the trades are for you. This is why when I worked construction, on most crews I worked on, I was surrounded by fucking losers. When I got into the specialized stuff, I got to work with real tradesmen.

Steltek 13y ago

Sounds a lot like the Paradox of Plenty [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse]. ND is fixated on the oil industry to the detriment of absolutely everything else. Hell, aren't they just burning all the extracted natural gas because it's basically a distraction from the liquid crude? There was an terribly sad update of the "Earth at Night" satellite image showing ND lit up like a Christmas Tree.

hueving 13y ago
> There was an terribly sad update of the "Earth at Night" satellite image showing ND lit up like a Christmas Tree Why is it sad? The light is from lights in towns, etc, not gas fires.
- thaumasiotes 13y ago
  Parent is presumably rooting for North Korea over South Korea based on the famous nighttime photos. ;)
- cpeterso 13y ago
  GP might be referring to this NASA satellite image, which the article says are burning gas flares of fracking rigs: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/fracking/10463494/Fracking-lights-up-the-North-Dakota-sky.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/fracking/10463494/Fr...
w1ntermute 13y ago
They need to send some people to Norway to learn how it's done: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/99680a04-92a0-11de-b63b-00144feabdc0.html http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/99680a04-92a0-11de-b63b-00144... (Google the URL and click on the link to bypass the paywall, or read it here: http://pastebin.com/055t6hiM http://pastebin.com/055t6hiM).
650REDHAIR 13y ago
From my limited understanding it's not profitable enough to capture and transport the burn off.
- fennecfoxen 13y ago
  Transport of the gas would itself require either some sort of pipelines, or gas liquefaction and transport via rail. Neither are particularly cheap, and natural gas prices are, for the moment, near all-time lows. (Storage, of course, is wildly implausible. Leaving the gas for extraction later at more profitable prices probably wouldn't be worth the time-value-of-money adjusted profits you could make by immediate extraction.)
protomyth 13y ago
They're trying to capture the gas now, ND issued some new rules on it. ND is not just fixated on oil, farming is just as big as ever. Look at the number of crops ND is first or second in the nation at delivering. Lord knows the words this spring will be "flood control" in the east.
pilom 13y ago
My understanding was they were extracting natural gas and burning off methane. Methane is much more difficult to transport (because the molecules are so small it leaks out of everything as a gas and its very difficult to get it cold enough to be a liquid). Eventually they'll have methane transport capabilities but for the moment it just gets burned off.
- mapt 13y ago
  Natural gas is perhaps 80% +- 15% methane. The rest is a variety of gasses, some of which constitute useful fuels in themselves, like propane and butane: these may be incorporated into the finished product (which is why we don't sell it as "methane"), or fractionated out. Historically, one saw 'stranded natural gas' flared from oil wells that produced too little natural gas or were in too remote a place to make a pipeline economical. Compressed natural gas is so low-energy-density that it's rarely economical to transport it outside the context of a pipeline - though this has changed in the last few decades with the adoption of liquified natural gas tanker ships and terminals to serve them; Still, the percentage of the value consumed by transportation is an order of magnitude higher than for oil tankers.

protomyth 13y ago

Welders still get that, truck drivers with some OT. The local towns will probably have the housing in the next year so the camps will be gone. Sewage planning is an amazingly complicated process. Also, the road changes to loop around towns are going to help.

JPKab 13y ago

Yeah, this is very common. It's simple economics: the barrier to entry for the majority of "starting at 100K" jobs was just geography, due to a short supply of workers and a huge demand. Eventually enough workers flood in, the wages drop, and the only people who can get a high starting salary are the highly skilled tradesmen (drill operators, welders, etc) Tie onto that the fact that rents are relatively high due to a housing shortage, and you get a bunch of people living paycheck to paycheck just like they were before.

protomyth 13y ago
Skilled vocational workers still make the cash (and drivers for other reasons), but grunts make grunt wages. There are several state grants to get more vocational training, not only for oil but for the extremely short supply of people for infrastructure projects. Due to worker and driver shortages many building projects in the east are delayed or taking much longer than thought.
- JPKab 13y ago
  Yep. We can thank our idiot high school guidance counselors in the US for this. If you are a high school student who is remotely responsible and productive, you are pushed to go to college for a "good job" and are actively dissuaded from any alternative except the military. Slacker? Stoner? Bad grades? Well ok then, maybe the trades are for you. This is why when I worked construction, on most crews I worked on, I was surrounded by fucking losers. When I got into the specialized stuff, I got to work with real tradesmen.