© 2024
NPR for Northern Colorado
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Coverage of energy that moves beyond polarized arguments and emotional debate to explore the points of tension, the tradeoffs and opportunities, and the very human consequences of energy policy, production, use and innovation.Inside Energy is a collaboration of seven public media outlets in the nation's energy epicenter: Colorado, Wyoming and North Dakota.

Studying The Anthropology Of North Dakota's Oil Boom Man Camps

Andrew Cullen
/
Inside Energy
Fox Run RV park in Williston, North Dakota, is home to hundreds of workers brought to the Bakken by its oil boom. RV parks are a cheap option in Williston, where apartment rents can rival Manhattan.

"Man camps" are a defining characteristic of an oil boom. Development happens so fast, there's never enough time to build adequate permanent housing - so temporary worker housing takes up the slack. When oil prices come crashing down, the man camps empty out.

Two researchers from the University of North Dakota, Bill Caraher and Bret Webber, said this housing boom-bust cycle is just part of a long history of settlement on the northern Great Plains. As part of their ongoing North Dakota Man Camp Project, they visit dozens of RV parks across the Bakken multiple times a year, interviewing residents and taking note of changes.

"OK, this is our favorite RV park in the entire Bakken," Bill Caraher excitedly said, arriving at the Fox Run RV Park. The park sits on a windy hillside north of Williston, North Dakota, the town at the center of the Bakken oil boom.

Drive through the rows of RVs and you'll see elaborate enclosed porches, garden gnomes, yard sculptures and dog runs. Caraher and Webber reminisce about a man cave someone had built onto the side of an RV that was here during their last visit.

"It had heat, it had full electrical, they had a big flat-screen TV in it," gushed Caraher. "It was spectacular."

What they love are residents' innovations. They've transformed these campers meant to be used by families for two weeks each summer into year-round oilfield housing. Passing a trailer surrounded by a fence made of scrap wood, Caraher blurts out, "I'm obsessed with shipping pallets."

http://youtu.be/2MbEZ-Yacgw

On their early trips to the Bakken they weren't so impressed. They were actually somewhat horrified by the living conditions in some of the parks. Bret Webber walks to an alley between two rows of RVs and points at the dog turds, exposed wires and garbage strewn about the dirty snow as an example of those conditions.

"My first reaction was people should not be having to live like this," Webber said. "Especially because there's a lot of money being generated by the activities that these folks are being involved in, and yet look at the quality of living."

As Webber spent more time in the man camps, his perspective changed. First, he realized this temporary housing made a lot of sense for oilfield workers like Kevin Andrews. He and his wife Dee Dee moved from Oregon to live in the North Dakota Indoor RV Park, an oversized storage unit with RVs behind each bay door. Living here saves them a lot of money, and they don't have to make permanent investments in a place they don't intend to stay.

"We're saving up for a nice piece of property with trees and a river and once that's paid off we'll go home," Andrews said.

Webber's second realization was that building lots of permanent housing can be too much of a gamble for oil patch communities. When one town, Watford City, started investing in a lot of housing and apartments a few years into the oil boom — something he initially thought all towns should do — Webber worried.

"My first reaction was, 'I hope they're doing the right thing here because this is a risky investment.'"

Towns that over-build when times are good can get stuck with the bill in a downturn. It's called the "too much mistake," a term coined by North Dakota historian Elwyn Robinson way back in the 1950s. That cycle of fluctuating population and housing needs, the researchers say, is not unique to this oil boom. It's also a part of agriculture, the area's original industry.

Credit Andrew Cullen / Inside Energy
/
Inside Energy
University of North Dakota researchers Bret Webber, right, Bill Caraher, center, and Richard Rothaus travel the Bakken documenting RV parks and other forms of labor housing in the oil patch.

Like many Great Plains states, North Dakota's economy has always been one that exports raw materials, from wheat to cattle to oil. All three are dependent on outside markets, markets that, as Webber said, "are constantly experiencing price fluctuations over which the local farmers or oil workers have absolutely no control."

Early homesteaders left during drought, or when commodity prices dropped. The northern prairie is littered with empty, weathered farmhouses, abandoned by owners who left for better opportunities. Oil workers do the same, especially as prices drop.

The difference? When the oil workers move on, they take their mobile homes with them, leaving nothing behind.

Inside Energy is a public media collaboration, based in Colorado, Wyoming and North Dakota, focusing on the energy industry and its impacts.

Related Content