“Man Camps” are a defining characteristic of an oil boom.
Development happens so fast, there’s never enough time to build adequate permanent housing. And when oil prices come crashing down, the man camps empty out.
Two researchers from the University of North Dakota say this housing boom-bust cycle is just part of the history of settlement on the northern Great Plains. Inside Energy’s Emily Guerin travelled with them recently, visiting temporary housing settlements all across the western part of the state.
GUERIN: I spent 3 days in December riding shotgun in a Chevy truck as we drove through what felt like every single man camp in the Bakken oilfield. My tour guides were professors Bill Caraher (care-a-her) and Bret Weber. And they saved the best for last. (HOLD AMBI UNDER)
CARAHER: Ok, this is our favorite RV park in the entire Bakken.
GUERIN: Caraher just turned off Highway 85 into Williston Fox Run. The park sits on a windy hillside north of Williston, the town at the center of the Bakken oil boom.
CARAHER: This is where we saw the most spectacular mudrooms. This is where we saw people planting trees in front of their RVs, we saw people with dog runs, we saw people with fenced yards, we saw people with...
Me (on tape): Wow look at that one! These are really cool.
GUERIN: (DUCK CAR AMBI UNDER) What they love is how residents have transformed these summer campers into year-round oilfield housing. And not just housing, but homes. Elaborately customized homes with garden gnomes, homemade porches and even a plywood man cave, built onto the side of an RV.
CARAHER: It had heat, it had full electrical, they had a big flat screen TV in it, it was spec-e-tacular.
GUERIN: But on their early trips to the Bakken they weren’t so impressed. Bret Webber explains.
WEBBER: Well, I remember when we first started coming out here and I would see something like this…
…(DUCK UNDER, SOUND OF WALKING)
GUERIN: He walks me over to an alley between two rows of RVs and points at the dog turds and garbage strewn about the dirty snow.
WEBBER: (FADE UP) My first reaction was oh, people should not be having to live like this. 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. This is a social justice issue.
GUERIN: But as Webber spent more time in the man camps, his perspective changed. First, he realized this temporary housing made a lot of sense for the oilfield workers -- workers like Kevin Andrews. He and his wife Dee Dee moved from Oregon to live in an RV outside the oil patch town of Watford City.
DEE DEE ANDREWS: We’re incredibly blessed. I mean look at our home, it’s lovely!
KEVIN ANDREWS: And if you saw the money that was going to the bank every week...we are thriving.
GUERIN: Like many oilfield workers, the Andrews don’t intend to stay in North Dakota.
KEVIN ANDREWS: 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.
GUERIN: The second realization for historian Bret Webber was that building lots of permanent housing can be a gamble for oilpatch communities. So, when one town - Watford City - started investing in a lot of housing and apartments...
WEBBER: My first reaction was, wooh, I hope they’re doing the right thing here because this is a risky investment.
GUERIN: Towns that over-build when times are good can get stuck with the bill in a downturn. And that housing boom bust cycle, the researchers say, is not unique to this oil boom. It’s also a part of the area’s original industry. Webber gets a little wonky when he explains this.
WEBBER: Agriculture and oil are both extractive industries dependent upon external markets.
And those markets are constantly experiencing price fluctuations over which the local farmers or oil workers have absolutely no control.
GUERIN: Early homesteaders left during drought, or when wheat prices dropped. Oil workers, like Dan Stegall, follow the booms. We met him outside his mobile home in one of the man camps.
STEGALL: I go where the oil is, you know? That’s how I’ve always been.
GUERIN: This northern prairie is littered with empty, weathered farmhouses, abandoned by owners who left for better opportunities elsewhere. The difference now is when the oil workers move on, they take their homes with them, leaving nothing behind.
For Inside Energy, I’m Emily Guerin.
