Better, Stronger, Faster: The Myth of American Decline . . . And the Rise of a New Economy
by Daniel Gross · 7 May 2012 · 391pp · 97,018 words
then two miles across—an efficient means of exploring vast stretches of territory. Once the two techniques were married in the Bakken Shale in 2007, oil rigs and workers came rushing in. Oil production rose sharply, from 45.9 million barrels in 2007 to 113 million in 2010 and more than 150
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. In tiny Williston, population 14,716, gas stations, convenience stores, and McDonald’s are offering $12.50 to $15 an hour for entry-level jobs. “Man camps”—temporary housing structures carted in from out of state—were seeking to hire cooks and cleaners making $1,500 and $1,000 per week, respectively
The Boom: How Fracking Ignited the American Energy Revolution and Changed the World
by Russell Gold · 7 Apr 2014 · 423pp · 118,002 words
work brought him to Baker Hughes, a large oil-field service company. For two weeks at a stretch, he lives in one of the many man camps that have been built in North Dakota. Cobbled together in a hurry, these sprawling complexes of connected modular buildings can hold seven hundred to one
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of the country. The population of the entire western part of the state could fit in a college football stadium. The largest operator of these man camps will soon house one out of every hundred North Dakotans. Sly Henderson’s story is typical. “Everyone comes for the money. Everyone comes because they
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and other petroleum products to gas stations. When the younger McClendon spent time with his father on the job, there was no romance of the oil rig. “I spent time looking at dirty bathrooms in gas stations,” he remembered years later. He attended Heritage Hall, a relatively new private high school that
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Brigham helped me understand what the Bakken was all about. Travis Kelly, of Target Logistics, gave me a tour of one of his company’s man camps and is also the source of the claim that it will soon house one of every one hundred North Dakotans. The Bill Klesse quote comes
The Frackers: The Outrageous Inside Story of the New Billionaire Wildcatters
by Gregory Zuckerman · 5 Nov 2013 · 483pp · 143,123 words
out on your own someday.” Mitchell earned a degree in petroleum engineering in 1940 and then worked in Louisiana’s Cajun country on an Amoco oil rig. Then World War II broke out. Like many of his friends, Mitchell expected to see combat overseas. He was wary, however, after mourning too many
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almost all of his company’s drilling and let most of his drilling pros go. By the end of 1998, Continental was operating just one oil rig, down from eight, and only had about fifty employees on staff. To avoid additional layoffs, every employee took a 15 percent pay cut. Almost everyone
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and the media, most of the smaller companies behind the shale revolution had relatively little experience dealing with the public. In April 2010, when an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico operated by oil giant BP began spewing oil, leading to the biggest spill in history, it sowed more suspicion of
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moving to the area receive housing from their employers, or enjoy a subsidy from their job enabling them to afford reasonable housing. Others settle into “man camps,” military-style complexes with communal showers and bathrooms. The rooms are clean, private, and efficient, usually featuring a bed, a small desk and refrigerator, and
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a flat-screen television. Some man camps even have elaborate cafeterias, gyms, laundries, and video-game rooms. The camps aren’t especially rowdy places. Most field hands are too exhausted after working
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up hauling fuel for an annual salary of about $60,000. The final straw for the family was when their landlord gave notice that a man camp would be built on their lot and that they needed to vacate the trailer. Before the Irish family even finished packing up, two Russian oil
This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate
by Naomi Klein · 15 Sep 2014 · 829pp · 229,566 words
be overtaken with howls of “Drill, Baby, Drill.” It won’t be enough even when we can walk across the Gulf of Mexico on the oil rigs, or when Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is a parking lot for coal tankers, or when Greenland’s melting ice sheet is stained black from
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of that case are familiar but bear repeating. In what became the largest accidental marine oil spill in history, a state-of-the-art offshore oil rig exploded, killing eleven workers, while oil gushed from the ruptured Macondo wellhead about one and a half kilometers below the surface. What made the strongest
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, pipefitters, miners, and engineers is, on the whole, highly mobile, moving from one worksite to the next and very often living in the now notorious “man camps”—self-enclosed army-base-style mobile communities that serve every need from gyms to movie theaters (often with an underground economy in prostitution). Even in
Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right
by Arlie Russell Hochschild · 5 Sep 2016 · 435pp · 120,574 words
Force for Growth and Opportunity (which had just been given the assignment of planning for the arrival of 18,000 workers to be housed in “man camps”; 13,000 of these workers were from out of state, including Filipino pipefitters). While in Lake Charles, I stayed at Aunt Ruby’s Bed and
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new industrial facility expansion in the United States. Beyond that, three hundred miles to the southeast, in the Gulf of Mexico, the Deep Water Horizon oil rig had exploded in 2010 in the worst marine oil spill in world history. Bayou d’Inde was at the epicenter, I realized, of an entire
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you couldn’t ignore it? What would my Tea Party friends say? Of course, just such a spectacular event did occur in 2010—the BP oil rig Deepwater Horizon exploded in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana. President Obama called it “the worst environmental disaster America has ever faced
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said, by workers from outside southwest Louisiana. Many companies would recruit professionals from around the world. Construction workers building the “man camps”—barracks within enclosed encampments—were Mexican, people said. The man camps would house 5,000 pipefitters, an undisclosed number of them Filipinos on temporary visas. Filipino workers have worked for over a
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some jobs,” Templet says, “but it causes other jobs to disappear or simply inhibits other sectors—such as the seafood industry and tourism—from growing.” Oil rig explosions such as the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon blowout severely hurt the seafood and tourism industries—oyster fishermen, deep sea fisherman, wholesalers, restaurateurs, and hotel
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to point out the window to an acre of grass. “See that? We could plant a screen of trees right there, and put up a ‘man camp’ behind it.” “A man camp?” I ask. “We’re expecting 5,000 temporary construction workers and 500 permanent technical workers. The construction workers will stay in
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man camps,” he explains matter-of-factly. According to the local American Press, industry would have openings for new welders, scaffolding workers, pipefitters, operators, iron workers, insulators,
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percent, and the Philippines to fill service industry and construction jobs.” So behind a strip of trees is where the man camps housing foreign workers would stand. Residents don’t want the man camps near them, Hardey says. What if the imported workers included rapists or burglars? they’d asked the mayor. “I don
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, but mostly, they don’t actually need our land, except for some heavy-haul throughways. But we could use some money, like to build the man camp here in Westlake, or executive housing on the golf course. I’ve been petting Sasol’s dog. I’m waiting to see if they’ll
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on special visas or green cards are ahead of you in line. Or maybe they snuck in. You’ve seen Mexican-looking men building the man camps that are to house Sasol’s Filipino pipefitters. You see the Mexicans work hard—and you admire that—but they work for less, and lower
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a pathway to honor. Meanwhile, the nearly all-male areas of life—the police, the fire department, parts of the U.S. military, and the oil rigs—needed defending against this cultural erosion of manhood. The federal government, the EPA, stood up for the biological environment, but it was allowing—and it
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River. Thanks to Jimmy and Marilyn Cox, who shared their close knowledge of Louisiana state politics and their generous hospitality. Jimmy also helped me research “man camps.” Thanks to Dan Schaad and Sherry Jones Miller of Aunt Ruby’s Bed and Breakfast, where I stayed in Lake Charles, another home away from
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decade on oil platforms in the Gulf CSRS, ibid. Often the presence of Filipino workers in Louisiana comes to light via news of accidents on oil rigs. Jennifer A. Dlouhy, “Dangers Face Immigrant Contract Workforce in Gulf,” FuelFix, November 3, 2013, http://fuelfix.com/blog/2013/11/03/dangers-face-immigrant-contractor
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-workforce-in-gulf. The local television station also ran a story about an injured Filipino worker injured on a Gulf oil rig. Associate Press, “Gulf Platform Owner Sued Over Deadly 2012 Blast,” KPLC-TV, http://www.kplctv.com/story/23832004/gulf-platform-owner-sued-over-deadly-2012
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in fracking, 74, 90 gender and, 138 Good Jobs First on, 260 high road strategy on, 77 under Jindal, 231 low road strategy on, 77 man camps, 74, 88–89 Mass Layoff Statistics on, 259, 314n259 oil and, 72, 73–76, 279n74, 280n74 permanent, 74–75 psychological program on, 61–64, 72
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–95 Louisiana Purchase Trees, 50 Louisiana State Tourist Bureau, 50–51 low road strategy, 77, 282n77 loyalty, 165 lynching, 304n208 MacGillis, Alec, 10–11, 251 man camps, 74, 88–89 Markey, Peter, 129–30 marsh, 271n39 masculinity, 202–3 Mass Layoff Statistics, 259, 314n259 Massey, Glenn, 119–20 Massey, Madonna, 22–23
Hope Dies Last: Visionary People Across the World, Fighting to Find Us a Future
by Alan Weisman · 21 Apr 2025 · 599pp · 149,014 words
need water, but not that kind. To the north, Turkey threatens to build yet another dam, and to the south, the Gulf is rising; exploratory oil rigs are circling the marshes; and with chaos in Ukraine causing food riots over cooking-oil shortages, agriculture wants more water. But the good news is
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workers were arrested for sex-trafficking Native minors—touted as an improvement over the chronic sex-for-drugs violence in North Dakota’s oil field “man camps.” Meanwhile, damage to the Mississippi watershed had commenced, with more to come as joints inevitably failed and pipe corroded. Each year, CO2 from burning Line
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,” he said. “Farther offshore, sea-states get increasingly difficult, with high waves constantly hitting you. You would need to design something similar to an offshore oil rig.” They assured him their plan was to be anchored firmly to the continental shelf, close to land. A naval architect Makris consulted had mentioned the