This article is mostly about the Montana towns and cities along the North Dakota/Montana state line: Billings, Sidney, Fairview, Bainville.
Data points:
- Jobless rate in Sidney: 2.8 percent; other parts of Montana -- 14 percent
- Fairview: railroad loading facility for oil; 100-car tanker trains
- Billings: more than 50 businesses chasing $1.5 billion/month being spent on oil wells in the Bakken
- More than 200 rigs in the Bakken; each well averages $7 million to drill
- Montana side of the Bakken: $1.2 billion/year
- Billings' Whitewood Transport, Inc (local trucking company): business has jumped 8-fold in two years
- Sanjel: opened new office in Billings
- Aspen Air US Corps of Billings, hauls liquefied nitrogen; sales have tripled
- RDO Equipment, sells heavy equipment; sales up one-third in two years
- Billings: not just the Bakken, but natural gas and coal
- First unit-train hauling crude to Louisiana left Dickinson, ND, on November 9, 2011
- Within 35-mile radius of Bainville, two companies are investing $500 million to $1 billion to build two oil loading facilities and a natural gas loading plant
- Businesses have to provide housing for their own employees
- 350 oil companies working in Williston
- "More trucks rolling Williston, ND, now than in downtown Chicago."
