North Dakota Oil Boom Is Bittersweet

Anyone live there?


http://money.aol.com/news/articles/_a/b ... eet/168974

Used to live in Minot and went through Stanley often.

I can see this happening in my area. Lots of Natural Gas Wells going up nowadays.

Mineral rights as well as water rights are a nationwide thing. I have heard similar stories about mineral rights in Tennesee and Kentuckey, where mining companies have started coal mining under peoples' homes and there is nothing they can do about it. Several court cases have proved it. I was required to have a title search on my 75x100 property before the bank would give me a mortgage, but if someone who had the land in their family since the 1800s it must be very hard to deal now with what their great great grandparents did. Let that be a lesson to anyone who sells the mineral rights to their land no matter how poor they are. You never know what is under your home. or what your grandchildren will have to deal with.

There was an oil boom like that here in the 1880's, then again in the 1920's. We have good hunting now, the oil is all gone.

I live near several oil boom towns that as e.alleg stated sprang up in the late 1800's. There are still producing wells in the area but a lot of abandoned ones that the DEP is cleaning up and reclaiming the old pipe. I grew up in one of those towns that had the first refinery in the area if not the first one ever. At one time this current small town of probably 500 people had enough people in it to support over 200 saloons. People don't realize that many inovations came from the western Pa oil fields. The first cable drilling rig, and the first rotory drilling rig were developed here.