COVER STORY He spent two years working in career
development at Augustana College in Sioux Falls while Karen worked as a retail store department manager. Then the couple got a call from Olson. “John basically said to us ‘I’m not getting
any younger,’ ” Beenken says. “ ‘If you’re interested in checking out the business why don’t you consider moving back to Sidney and see if you want it?’ ” It is hard for Beenken to believe how
much time has passed. But with business thriving and challenges posed by the Bakkan boom still to be dealt with — and kids firmly entrenched in school and various activities — the job is still worth doing. “Did I know that we were going to stay
this long?” Beenken says. “No. There have been some trying times in there but then that Bakken oil boom came in the mid 2000s and changed everything out there.”
BAKKEN FORTH The Bakken Shale Formation is a swath
that encompasses westernNorthDakota, the eastern corner of Montana and southern Manitoba and Saskatchewan in Canada. Long under development, the region exploded
in the mid-2000s as drilling peaked, and led to a massive population influx centered inWilliston,N.D., across the border and just north of Sidney, but affecting all the communities within the formation. Some counties in the area have doubled
their populations and Sidney,Williston, and Watford City, among other towns, exploded with growth. The demographics don’t look to be changing any time soon. “Everything that we hear, especially on the
NorthDakota side, is this is going to be with us for years,” Eric Beenken says. It’s not just the oil field workers and
drivers, Beenken said. An oil drilling enterprise also means support people — maintenance and upkeep — and all the bookkeepers, suppliers, truck mechanics and people in service professions to support the support people. It is estimated that each rig creates 125
new full-time jobs. And that has also meant more customers for Blue Rock. “Our sales were greatly affected on the
positive side by literally tens of thousands more consumers in our franchise area,” Eric Beenken says. The boom is more than five times larger
Pepsi team wins in 2011
than the Bakken boom of the 1980s, according to
minneapolisfed.com, the web site for the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. By default the Bakken boom outstripped previous oil production expansions in Montana andNorthDakota. Employment levels have doubled in the
area since 2009 alone, helping the area to survive the recession relatively unscathed, withNorthDakota carrying the lowest unemployment rate in the nation, 3.5 percent in 2011. As of July, the Bakken area employed just over 96,000, compared to more than 476,000 for the rest of Montana and almost 312,000 for the rest ofNorthDakota. “Even in 2005 we were starting to feel the
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