The Bakken Is Different -- But We All Knew That

An excerpt from an article everyone interested in the Bakken should read.

I have reprinted the article in its entirety in case the original link is broken, but have left it in draft form for now, and will post it some months from now.

The original link is here. It begins:

The steady growth of U.S. oil and gas production in recent years has come from a number of shale formations across the country. But not every region is seeing the same growth in economic activity from the energy boom cracked open by horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing technology.

The Bakken and emerging Three Forks formations in North Dakota and eastern Montana stand out from other shale areas for a host of reasons. For starters, the formations have a large amount of relatively more profitable oil reserves, as opposed to gas reserves. The Bakken region also had a moderately small preboom population and workforce and little oil and gas infrastructure. As oil drilling and production increased, it generated a high fraction of well-paid employment in oil- and gas-related activities compared with other shale areas, thus helping to drive unemployment rates down and average wages up.