This growth has come with a steep price. The New York Times has published a series of articles detailing the woes of the Bakken Shale boom; you can (and should!) read them RIGHT HERE. Thousands of wells pepper western North Dakota's landscape, and in addition to an oil and gas bonanza, they've brought lots of problems. Pollution, corruption, cronyism, catastrophic accidents, habitat destruction, and spills - lots of spills. An estimated 18 million gallons of toxic sludge has spewed into unwanted places in the last eight years.
Reporters Deborah Sontag and Robert Gebeloff seem to have done a thorough job digging the Bakken dirt, and drilling down into the seamy substrate of this shale boom. A veil of secrecy masks much of the information related to drilling, but they did unearth lots of facts, and got some tasty interviews with various officials.
One of their interviewees was Ron Ness, the president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council. Ness states that "...there wasn't a damn thing..." in pre-boom Watford City and vicinity. He goes on to regale the reporters with the benefits of the fracking boom: "We've got the largest-producing Cinnabon anywhere in the world".
Well. Who can argue with that for progress, and a surefire sign of economic growth. Cinnabon, that sugary fat-laden elixir of the turnpike plazas, whose staple Cinnabon Classic packs a whopping 880 calories and 36 grams of fat.
But stippling the prairies with well pads is progress, apparently. And progress can be measured by Cinnabon sales.