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Economy
Fracking for Oil Destroying the Good Old Days
2012-07-19
Front-page WaPo, grinding the green meme.
Donny Nelson is the epitome of old-time North Dakota. A lean, sharp-featured man sporting a thick goatee, jeans and dirty boots, Nelson is the grandson of homesteaders. Over the past century his family has collected 8,000 acres of prime cattle grazing acreage and cropland.

But now Nelson has some unwanted company: Oil prospectors.
Oh noes! Not oil prospectors! Next thing is locusts!
This remote corner of North Dakota is the site of the biggest U.S. oil rush in decades. It is pumping new supplies into oil markets and swelling state coffers; advocates say it could help reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil.
Others say it's just a drop in the bucket, not worth the terrible sacrifices!
But the boom is also spreading a degree of chaos across the rural towns and gently undulating pasturelands here.
Sorta like Pennsylvania in the 1880's? Oklahoma in the 1900's? California in the 1920's? Texas, still?
A degree of chaos that means that the connected and the chums aren't getting theirs...
Two towering oil rigs are drilling holes on Nelson's property. One of the rigs, alongside two rows of 25-foot storage tanks, is planted on a red dirt pad, or clearing, right below a majestic butte that Native Americans over the ages have visited for ceremonial fasts. When they were kids, Donny and his brother climbed up and carved their names on the flat-topped butte next to others going back to 1880.
Waitaminute...Did Donny just admit to descrating a sacred site?
He could have said no...
This is Nelson's land, but he won't see any money from those wells, or nearly a dozen others that firms are planning to drill. The mineral rights were sold years ago, starting in the 1950s, when oil was discovered in North Dakota.
Thanks Dad...
No, waitaminit: the money from those sales prob'ly paid for the last two generations' purchases of land and cattle, right? Kitchen and bathrooms been updated since 1950, taking the kids to McDonalds on the nights the wife was too tired to cook? Idiot.
Nelson and his family have leased out rights they do own, and his share of the royalties from four wells comes to about $8,000 a month.
His Daddy made a choice and now sonny-boy don't like it.
Well have YOU ever tried to live on $8,000 a month?
Which is $96,000 per year before taxes -- I checked. There are indeed those who would define that as piddling and picayune, but they are few.
It's a modest sum, he said, for the headaches that go with it. He's squabbled with oil companies over drilling waste, a saltwater spill and decades-old storage tanks eaten away by chemicals. "I'd give it all back if I could for all the trouble it's been," said Nelson, 48.

Above all, he misses a time when people didn't lock their doors and knew all their neighbors.
Me too, Donny, except I can barely remember that time in my life.
Dear Mr. Nelson, it was your family that invited them in. Do stop whining.
"I don't like what it's done to our communities and lifestyle," he said. "We had a good life, including the hundred grand a year from the oil companies and now it's gone forever, or at least for my lifetime."
I believe if I had a fixed income of $8,000 per month, I could maybe retire far away from the oil rigs. Comfort, Texas is a nice place.
Posted by:Bobby

#6  I don't think the "decades old storage tanks" are a part of the current push.
Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain   2012-07-19 19:27  

#5   "I'd give it all back if I could for all the trouble it's been," said Nelson, 48.

"or I could resell them rights....at higher prices"
Posted by: Frank G   2012-07-19 15:50  

#4  Oh noes! Not oil prospectors! Next thing is locusts!

Then the sheep farmers. Then ya got a range war.
Yeah, I saw them movies...
Posted by: tu3031   2012-07-19 14:57  

#3  He does realize that, things going the way they used to, fed would be closing him down in a few years---cause "meat is murder"?
Posted by: g(r)omgoru   2012-07-19 14:52  

#2  decades-old storage tanks eaten away by chemicals.

Decades-old storage tanks?
Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain   2012-07-19 14:42  

#1  Wonder what the NPV of those rights was back in the fifties.
Posted by: Perfesser   2012-07-19 14:35  

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