The Bust That Did Not Occur -- August 21, 2019

Updates

Later, 8:59 p.m. CT: any millennial journalist writing about housing shortages in the oil patch needs to watch the 1943 American movie, "The More The Merrier." 

Original Post

Don caught this story; sent me the link. Thank you.

This story is so interesting on so many levels. Same story in North Dakota.

From Reuters:

ODESSA, TEXAS (Reuters) - In west Texas, the center of the U.S. oil boom, about 3,800 students at Permian High School are crammed into a campus designed for 2,500, with 20 portable buildings to help with the overflow.

School officials had expected enrollment to fall after the last oil price crash, starting in 2014, but it kept rising - one sign of a growing resilience in the region’s oil economy as Exxon Mobil, Chevron  and other majors continue pouring billions of dollars into long-term investments here.

For most of the last century, oil money has flowed into this region like a rising tide during booms - but residents here had enough sense to know it would flow right back out again when the next bust hit. That cycle has always made officials, developers and voters wary of investing too much during the good times on everything from school construction to roads to housing.

That hesitance is fading fast as oil majors make ever-larger and longer-term commitments to drill in the Permian Basin and residents grow weary of traffic jams on once-rural roads, long waits for medical appointments, pricey housing and overcrowded schools. Local governments, industry and foundations are joining forces to tackle the region’s overwhelmed infrastructure and public services. 

The story contains elements of "fake news," about how bad things are in the Permian. It may be that bad; it may be worse. I don't know. But it perpetuates the worldview that growth is bad and it's good that New York bans fracking, and that New York and New Jersey ban new pipelines. But consider the alternative: no jobs, no oil, no nothing.

We saw the same stories during the Bakken book, and local folks handled it. I went back to the Bakken numerous times during the boom. It was incredibly exciting. It was amazing to see what men and women could accomplish, how they handled adversity, how they rose to the challenge. Wow, it certainly beats those days when men, women, and children were putting wagon trains in circles to fight off the local residents. And it certainly beats living in countries where terrorists kill 63 people attending a wedding.