Earlier this week Bloomberg had a "must read" piece about the wild west oil rush that's consuming the western half of North Dakota.  The reporting includes some numbers that have mostly been ignored in North Dakota over the past couple years.  The whole story is worth reading, but this excerpt, from the middle, really caught my attention...

“No one ever anticipated this type of impact,” said Donald W. Longmuir Jr., a planner and emergency coordinator for Mountrail County. “We’re actually three to five years behind in funding.”

Calls to the county’s volunteer ambulance and fire services tripled since 2009, Longmuir said.

Mountrail’s 1,600-mile road system -- which became so overloaded last spring that officials ran out of “road closed” signs, and postal carriers were unable to deliver the mail to some places -- needs to be rebuilt at a price tag of $600 million, Hynek said.

Williston received $1.5 million in 2011 from the oil extraction tax, which Koeser said “doesn’t even come close” to paying for its infrastructure needs.

LaFontaine, the Williston schools superintendent, said she needs about $87 million to build two elementary schools and one intermediate school and to hire new teachers. State lawmakers voted down a bill last year that would have provided some funding. LaFontaine, who based her estimate of 1,200 new students this fall on new housing construction, asked oil company executives to meet with her recently and asked for help paying for new facilities.

Bloomberg.com (This whole article is really very enlightening. Please read all of it.)

Did  you get that? One county -- Mountrail County -- needs $600 million in the short term to fix all the roads that have been destroyed by oil traffic.  How can this be?!?  

Just before the 2011 legislative session, we were all told by the Bismarck Tribune / Associated Press that the total amount of money needed to repair oil field road destruction OVER THE NEXT 20 YEARS in the entire western half of the state was $900 million.  The "Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute" (part of NDSU [go figure]) put together a seventy-four (74) page study of the anticipated costs of oil fiend road repairs, and told us all 17 counties would need $900 over the next 20 years.  (Here's a link to the report.)

I was surprised when I heard that $900 million over 20 years number because, back at that same time, I was hearing from friends in Mountrail County that Mountrail County alone would need at something like $250 million over the next five (5) years. (See the 8th comment, here.)  I was trying to figure out how it could be possible that the other 16 then-currently-active oil field counties (not even taking into consideration other counties that are soon going to be dragged into this mess) would be able to split up the remaining $650 million ($900 million total over 20 years minus $250 million needed by Mountrail County in the next five years) over the next 20 years, while Mountrail County's road repair needs SURELY would not disappear in five years.  

Then, during the 2011 ND legislative session, the legislature appropriated roughly $142 million for county and township road reconstruction money, total. (Source) During the 2011 special session another $23 million was appropriated for the biennium. (Source) That's a total of $165 million for counties and townships to divide up over the next two years for the 17 oil counties' road repairs.  And it appears -- based upon a press release from the Governor's office -- that more than half of that money goes to townships, not counties. Because of the Mountrail County needs I was hearing about -- $250 million over five years -- the $165 million for 17 counties has never impressed me in the least, though it has been a constant, major bragging point for Republicans like Jack Dalrymple. I shoud mention, too, that there was another $100 million in "oil impact" grant money appropriated, and I'm not sure whether any of that can go to highways and roads. I'll just assume it can't becuase, if it could, it'd be more clear in all the gushing press releases. 

And now, in the Bloomberg story, we find out Mountrail County's needs are actually $600 million over five years, and not $250 million over five years.

I know this is pretty arbitrary and unrealistic, but if you just randomly divided the $165 million between the 17 oil field counties over the two year biennium, each county and all the townships within it would get about $5 million per year for road repairs.  I wonder how far that $5 million dollars per year goes when you're Mountrail County and need $120 million per year for each of the next five years.  

Forgetting about the problems funding schools, etc., mentioned in the Bloomberg story, Counties don't have a lot of options when trying to figure out how to pay for these massive highway reconstruction needs. They can take the pittance that trickles down to them from the state and they can increase property taxes to pay for the rest of it. There's another paragraph in the Bloomberg story I got a chuckle out of.

Oil companies say they’re doing their part to help western North Dakota cope. Houston-based Marathon gave $1 million in Dickenson [sic], Continental donated $500,000 in Crosby, and New York- based Hess Corp. (HES) contributed $25 million to the state for public education, said Ron Ness, president of the Bismarck-based North Dakota Petroleum Council.

Bloomberg.com

Well isn't that special?  Some of the oil companies are taking tiny portions of their massive, record, billion dollar profits and giving a little back to localities, hoping it will distract the public's attention away from the enormity of the funding problems they are creating.

What's my point?

The "Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute" (UGPTI) report linked-to above needs another look. (More accurately, it probably needs to be round-filed.) I don't know who put that report together, but they are obviously either incompetent, or corrupt, or the oil field explosion was completely unanticipatable. I think folks on North Dakota's Industrial Commission -- Dalrymple, Stenehjem and Goehring -- have known all along the impending enormity of the oil field growth.  How could they not? They issue the drilling permits. Their experts -- Lynn Helms, especially -- are making all kinds of huge predictions and have been for months or years.

Dalrymple, Stenehjem and Goehring are dropping the ball.  Nobody is holding them accountable. Where is the press on this?

If we had competent leadership in North Dakota -- and we can't blame Democrats or any of this, because the people have put all their trust in the GOP -- the Republicans would be calling the UGPTI back in to explain how it is that their numbers are so far off. If there's no reasonable explanation, someone needs to be held accountable. But nobody's doing anything about any of this. Right now the only people WE can hold accountable are the politicians. And we'll have to wait until November to do that.  Or... we can just cover our eyes and ears, put the fox back in the henhouse again, and hope for the best.

Here's another question for you to chew on:  How is it possible some blogger (yours truly) knew Mountrail County's needs were so much more than the UGPTI was saying they were back in December 2010 and January 2011?  I was off by more than half, but UGPTI's report is obviously off by a factor of another 5 or 10.

Someone's got some 'splaining to do.

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