N. Dakota oil country eases into break from frantic growth
KILLDEER, N.D. — Dawn Marquardt strolled into the gleaming new Aquatics and Wellness Center here, spoils of the oil boom in North Dakota.
“This is my baby,” said the Killdeer city administrator, pointing out the indoor pool and the exercise room with a fleet of fancy workout machines that rival a big-city gym.
The oil boom that ignited North Dakota’s economy in the early part of this decade created new jobs, new businesses, new housing and new amenities such as this aquatics center. And while the downturn that started in late 2014 tamed western North Dakota’s economy, it never crushed it.
That’s evident in Killdeer, a small town in the heart of the oil patch and a microcosm of the state’s petroleum economy.
“I don’t think this truly was a bust, where everything just died and businesses up and left,” Marquardt said. “You saw a slowdown.”
Small towns like Killdeer prospered as oil surged above $100 a barrel, attracting workers and boosting tax revenue. Then oil prices plunged, setting the state’s economy on pause as rigs shut down and production faded.
Now, as the industry has recovered somewhat, Killdeer residents are hoping it rises steadily, without the chaos of the boom years.
Housing markets — which were so overheated during the boom that some longtime Killdeer employers built residences for their own workers — have stabilized. So has the job market, with employers still scrounging for workers in Dunn County, which in May had a meager unemployment rate of around 2 percent.
Killdeer’s population sits at 1,200, down from 2,000 at the boom’s peak but well above the 700 people it had in 2000. Transient workers come and go, but people have also moved to Killdeer and stayed.
It’s an enviable trend as many rural towns struggle to survive.
“The pressure before was, how do you make the community grow and bring people in?” Marquardt said. “What you heard before was, ‘Our town was dying.’”
Killdeer is the largest town in one of North Dakota’s least populated counties, a place of gracefully rolling hills dotted with cattle and pump jacks, the nodding oil well-tops that look like mechanical birds.
Historically, the town and Dunn County have relied on ranching and growing wheat and hay, though oil wells were drilled as early as 1960.
Now oil revenue is the county’s — and Killdeer’s — biggest source of revenue. Pipelines and other oil and gas infrastructure make up 62 percent of Dunn County’s tax base, with agriculture second.
In 2010, the figure was reversed.
The oil money spigot constricted over the past year for the entire state as output fell. North Dakota collected $1.48 billion in oil production and extraction taxes in its most recent fiscal year, down from $2.8 billion a year earlier.
North Dakota in 2016 also faced its first net out-migration in eight years, with 4,684 people exiting, according to the state Department of Commerce.
However, the state had net in-migration of nearly 60,000 people during the previous five years.
Dawn English, a 40-year-old Texas native, is one of them. Her husband came to work in the oil fields in 2010, initially as an equipment operator. He lived in a recreational vehicle in the early years, and both spouses shuttled back and forth to see each other.
English moved to North Dakota in 2014, and she and her six children now live on a 750-acre farm about 15 miles west of Killdeer. She and her husband manage the farm in addition to his oil industry job. Last year, they sold their former home in Fort Worth.
“We really enjoy it here,” English said at poolside while some of her children played at Killdeer’s aquatic center. “I feel like my kids have a lot more opportunities here. They’re not so lost in the shuffle.”