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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ISSUE 5, 2014 | www.mttrucking.org


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