WORLD • DECEMBER 28, 2013
26 WILLISTON FRACKING.indd 50
Prairie plant One hundred and thirty miles south of Williston, another dusty town called Dickinson is reaping the benefits of the region’s oil drilling. It hosts dozens of businesses, muddy roads that fling dirt beneath pickup trucks, a Ukrainian Cultural Institute, a railroad carrying black tank cars, and an oil pump jack bobbing next to a subdivision full of new homes and duplexes. Dickinson ranked third on the U.S. Census Bureau’s most recent list of “Fastest Growing Micro Areas,” and is home to the first new U.S. oil refinery to be built on an undeveloped site in years. In late October construction of the million refinery, the Dakota Prairie Refinery, proceeded at the end of a mud and gravel driveway with a posted mph speed
limit. Brown-and-white cows grazed in adjacent fields while cranes jutted up above cylindrical steel tanks that will hold crude oil, naphtha, diesel, and kerosene. Train tracks ran alongside the site. Once completed, the refinery will use the region’s crude oil to produce , gallons of diesel fuel per day, enough to fill tank trucks. Oddly, although North Dakota is pumping over , barrels of crude oil each day (second only to Texas in production), because much is shipped elsewhere for refining, the state imports much of the diesel needed to run trucks and heavy machinery. The Dakota Prairie Refinery, built by MDU Resources Group, is scheduled to be finished in late . Plant manager Dave Podratz said the company is in the process of hiring engineers, accountants, and clerks to run the facility. “We’re getting applications from all over the country. ... I’ve seen Montana, I’ve seen Nebraska, I’ve seen Arkansas.” —D.J.D.
An oil truck drives on I- just north of Dickinson, N.D.
MAN CAMP: JENN ACKERMAN/THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX • DAKOTA PRAIRIE REFINERY: DANIEL JAMES DEVINE • DICKINSON: KEN CEDENO/CORBIS/AP
to , and as of October were on track to increase another percent in . An annual report provided to WORLD from the Williston Police Department indicates local calls doubled between and . Arrests for felonies and misdemeanors increased percent in alone. Crime in North Dakota overall, a historically safe state, ticked up percent in . Drugs are running in Williston: In November federal officials announced they were adding Williams County to their High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program. While some see Williston’s rapid growth as a problem, others see opportunity. The town is building a million recreation center with indoor tennis courts and a golf simulator. Instead of coming into town alone a few weeks at a time, many men are moving their wives and children here permanently. Although Williston’s increase in children has been overwhelming to public schools (they’re renting “portable classrooms” to handle the lack of space), pastors see an opportunity to reach young families or single workers looking for new community or spiritual direction. “We’re tripling our square footage,” said Mike Skor, the lead pastor of New Hope Wesleyan Church, which has installed huge steel beams in the ground for a facility that will include an indoor playground and coffeehouse. “Just our middle school and high school ministry—every week it seems we have a record number of kids. It just keeps climbing.” Ashley Olinger was a logger in northern British Columbia, Canada, before he moved to Williston in to become the senior pastor of Cornerstone FBC. The Southern Baptist church began building a new facility with a sloping -seat auditorium in a Williston field in . Now the facility is surrounded by OVERFLOWING WORKFORCE: a new medical clinic, a new An oil field worker from Minnesota in one of the man camps in Williston. Motel , and a row of new apartments. “Our church has gotten drastically younger in the last couple of years,” Olinger said. “Between and percent of our church is under feet tall.” Since local kids sometimes live in camper trailers or apartments, Cornerstone opens its building on Thursday mornings to give moms and kids space to play. Every second Sunday the church hosts lunch, with much of the food provided by a local man camp, to provide fellowship for its members or for workers in town without their families. After a short-lived oil boom in Williston a few decades ago, Olinger said, “there was an underlying assumption that [this one] was going to be another flash in the pan.” Now people speculate the current boom will last years or more. He’s hoping to find the resources to build a second facility that would include more kids’ classrooms and a gym. During a recent weekday evening sermon, the former logger spoke of the Great Commission and God’s sovereignty: “He owns the cattle on a thousand hills—and the oil that lies a mile beneath the earth.” A
Email: ddevine@wng.org
12/10/13 3:43 PM