Originally Posted by
Mantra
Interesting. Out of curiosity, do you guys feel like the oil boom may play a part in people's feelings about all this?
I've read a lot about how much has changed in North Dakota in the aftermath of the boom, how some towns had their whole culture and economy transformed overnight. I know a Somali guy who was an oil worker out there a couple years back, and he talked the other oil workers giving him a real hard time, having to deal with a lot of harassment about being black and Muslim and whatnot. I've also read a lot about how the housing/rent market has been totally transformed. I experienced myself a couple years ago when I drove through Dickens and tried to get a hotel room and saw that the cheapest one was like $175 because so many oil workers had started using the hotels for housing which drove the prices way up. Seems like the whole area is going through some really dramatic changes.
I'm just speculating here, but I suspect that a lot of North Dakota people feel pretty positive about the oil industry right now. And so maybe they aren't very sympathetic to a pipeline protest? Maybe it's kind of like trying to protest a new coal mine in a region where their economy is tied to coal. But that's all just my personal speculation, of course.
What do you guys think? How do most ND residents feel about the boom?