Post by Logan on Feb 7, 2016 22:02:23 GMT -6
WILLISTON, N.D. — The “man camps” sprang up from the prairie, rows of trailers and modular steel boxes that housed thousands of workers chasing their fortunes in North Dakota’s oil fields. But these days, the man camps are missing something: men.
Roughly eight years ago, at the peak of the last recession, oil drilling began to transform these remote corners of the plains into an economic beacon, attracting billions of dollars in new investments and thousands of workers in search of good-paying jobs and an escape from America’s economic pain. But now, as oil prices have skidded to $30 a barrel, new drilling has dried up here, and the flood of wealth and workers is ebbing.
“You couldn’t find a place,” Brian Resh, 32, said, recalling the busy days one recent morning as he glanced across a nearly empty cafeteria of one of the area’s largest remaining man camps. “Two years ago, you’d drive at night at 3 a.m. and you’d see 300 people.”
Now, laid-off oil-field workers are piecing together new jobs, and some have left town. Hotels that were once booked solid for months are about half occupied. Some of the new luxury apartments built to handle the surge of arrivals are dark. Business is down by 40 percent at a new brewery that once had two-hour dinner lines for cowboy-cut rib-eyes and Williston brownies (which come à la mode). And many of the camps built to house an influx of workers, the vast majority of them male, are emptying out like a bar after last call.
Read more: www.nytimes.com/2016/02/08/us/built-up-by-oil-boom-north-dakota-now-has-an-emptier-feeling.html
Roughly eight years ago, at the peak of the last recession, oil drilling began to transform these remote corners of the plains into an economic beacon, attracting billions of dollars in new investments and thousands of workers in search of good-paying jobs and an escape from America’s economic pain. But now, as oil prices have skidded to $30 a barrel, new drilling has dried up here, and the flood of wealth and workers is ebbing.
“You couldn’t find a place,” Brian Resh, 32, said, recalling the busy days one recent morning as he glanced across a nearly empty cafeteria of one of the area’s largest remaining man camps. “Two years ago, you’d drive at night at 3 a.m. and you’d see 300 people.”
Now, laid-off oil-field workers are piecing together new jobs, and some have left town. Hotels that were once booked solid for months are about half occupied. Some of the new luxury apartments built to handle the surge of arrivals are dark. Business is down by 40 percent at a new brewery that once had two-hour dinner lines for cowboy-cut rib-eyes and Williston brownies (which come à la mode). And many of the camps built to house an influx of workers, the vast majority of them male, are emptying out like a bar after last call.
Read more: www.nytimes.com/2016/02/08/us/built-up-by-oil-boom-north-dakota-now-has-an-emptier-feeling.html