Friday 9 March 2012

Dialog Good Start for The Bakken


I attended a very interesting session this week called the Sporting and Oil Industry Forum. The purpose of the meeting was to establish a dialog between North Dakota’s oil and gas industry and the State’s conservation leaders. Hunters and fisherman were represented by virtually all of the conservation/hunting groups. I was representing Delta.  Pheasants Forever, DU, Mule Deer Foundation, NWTF, RMEF, Audubon and several others were there as well.

North Dakota, long the butt of countless jokes and only in the news when 14 foot drifts cover our highways or someone dies of lutefisk poisoning, finds itself in the rare position of being newsworthy. Unemployment is staggeringly low, the agricultural economy is strong and oil and gas development is proceeding at a frantic pace. North Dakota is well endowed with great duck and other habitat. It has wonderfully nice people.  It is also blessed with remarkable resources. Coal, a long-term staple in the State is now joined by wind development and the emergence of the Bakken formation, one of the largest domestic sources of oil and natural gas. North Dakota news outlets refer to the Bakken as the American Saudi Arabia. The people of North Dakota are movin’ on up.