Despite All The Hand-Wringing: Rail Accidents Have Not Increased -- The Dickinson Press; Entire Southwest North Dakota Benefitting From Oil

The Dickinson Press is reporting:

So while crude-by-rail traffic out of North Dakota and across the nation has increased, “we have not seen a corresponding … increase in accidents,” said Brigham McCown, former administrator of the Pipelines and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. “That’s the good news.”

Of course that was buried so deep in the story, one had to practically read the entire story.

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The Dickinson Press is also reporting that the entire southwest region of North Dakota -- not just Dickinson, but the entire southwest -- is seeing benefits from the oil and gas industry:

The eight counties comprising the southwest corner — Adams, Billings, Bowman, Dunn, Golden Valley, Hettinger, Stark and Slope — all saw increases in taxable sales between 2008 and 2012.

The North Dakota Tax Department publishes the taxable sales and purchases for the 200 largest cities in the state. All of the southwest North Dakota cities that fall into that category experienced an increase in taxable sales and purchases between 2008 and 2012, and most had official population decreases.

Dickinson itself saw taxable sales and purchases increase 185% from $362 million to more than $1 billion between 2008 and 2012 -- due to the Bakken oil boom. The city's population is now estimated to be between 25,000 and 30,000, up from 18,000 in 2010, and 16,000 in 2000. In other words, the population of Dickinson has probably doubled between 2000 and 2012.

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By the way, if you have not seen it, this is a nice publication: the Drill.