North Dakota Envy -- Minnesota -- Bakken, North Dakota, USA

Link here.

You'd never get a Minnesotan to acknowledge it, but there's a lot of North Dakota envy going around these days.

Here was an August 19, 2011, headline on the New York Times website: "The North Dakota Miracle." And then, just three days later, this one, also on the Times site: "The Happiest States of America: North Dakota on the Rise."

These two paragraphs caught my eye:

No doubt, some will seize on North Dakota's lower individual and income tax rates as proof that Minnesota needs to do the same in order to compete. But if that's all it took this column would be about South Dakota, which has no individual or corporate income taxes and usually appears at or near the top of most "business friendly" rankings.
Geology, not tax policy, explains North Dakota's incredible run. They've been drilling for oil in the Williston Basin since the early 1950s, but new horizontal drilling technologies have allowed prospectors to tap into the rich Bakken Formation. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that the region holds about 4.3 billion barrels of recoverable reserves of oil, larger than all other current oil assessments in the lower 48 states.

In fact, the natural resources in this country is not limited to North Dakota: oil, natural gas, timber, coal, rare earths, etc., but there are some areas of the country where environmentalists and pro-growth folks somehow make it work. But a permitorium in the Gulf -- ask Louisianas if it's geology or taxes or government regulations that make you or break you.

If fracking was banned in North Dakota; if the state banned any more pipeline; if the state raised taxes on oil companies, things would be a lot different.

I beg to differ with the folks in Minnesota who think it's all about geology in North Dakota. It's all about taxes and government regulations.

The boom has been very, very difficult on folks living in the middle of it, but somehow the folks are getting along and doing their best to keep it moving along smoothly.

No, it's a lot more than geology. Texas, Lousisiana, Oklahoma, California, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Alaska have their fair share of  oil, too, and some of  them have a nicer (weather) climate in which to work. Oregon and Washington have the potential for some of the best transportation / harbor networks in the world but anti-growth folks are doing their best to put a stop to that. I don't want to get into it, but two of the nation's largest ports, both located in California, are feeling pressured by ports in Mexico, again due to business climate and not geology or geography.

Adding support to my argument is the story about ExxonMobil signing a $3.2 billion deal with a Russian company to develop the Arctic. If "you" can't get anything done wtih the Obama adminsitration, there's always others with whom to deal. Both the US and Russia have the "geology" but Exxon has to work with the Russians to get anything done.