Oil in North Dakota

Here's an excerpt from a NYTimes story about oil in North Dakota, from January 1, 2008:

STANLEY, N.D. — At dawn, people from faraway states huddle outside the Mountrail County courthouse here, the coldest ones leaving briefcases and books to secure their spots for the moment it opens.

It is a peculiar sight in Stanley, population roughly 1,200, one in a constellation of isolated and, in some cases, shrinking farm towns along North Dakota’s wide open western edge where few residents recall a traffic jam.

The early morning line hints at the sudden fortune that has arrived: Oil companies, saying that they located what may prove to be one of the largest recent oil finds in the United States, have begun drilling all through these parts. Fifty-two drilling rigs were at work in the state at the end of December; a count taken in October showed that 198 new wells had been drilled in a year, state officials said.

At the courthouse, the crush of people, known as landmen in the world of oil, spend their days scouring enormous old binders of deeds, each trying to sort out who owns the mineral rights to land that once seemed valuable mainly for growing durum wheat or peas.

There's been oil drilling in western North Dakota for as long as I can remember. In the North Dakota Badlands, outside of Theodore Roosevelt National Park, there are derricks (is that the word for the pumping thing or is that the word for the drilling thing?) sprinkled about, silently pumping away. I found them to be kind of beautiful. And the oil companies have built dirt roads in and through the badlands that are a hoot to drive and give you access to spectacularly beautiful land.