Support the fact-based journalism you rely on with a donation to Marketplace today. Give Now!

Can fracking preserve North Dakota's environment?

Oct 18, 2013
The fracking boom is bringing in a surge of development -- and tax revenue -- to North Dakota. Now conservationists have a plan use some of that growth to protect the environment.

Working an oil rig will make a man of you

Jul 10, 2013
Tait Salzer moved to North Dakota to get in on the state's oil boom. He works an oil rig.

Surrounded by wolves in a North Dakota oil town

May 3, 2013
A young woman takes action to feel safe in an oil boomtown filled with lonely and sometimes aggressive men.

Oil-boom sprawl swallows a North Dakota city

Mar 8, 2013
The oil industry and the thousands of workers it's attracted have swallowed up communities like Williston, N.D., where neighborhoods on the edge of town now feel like they're in the center.

Not everyone in oil-boom country finds what they want

Jan 8, 2013
The oil boom in North Dakota has attracted tens of thousands of people looking for work. There are a lot of jobs, but it's not a boom for everyone.

Seeing opportunity in North Dakota's oil boom

Dec 11, 2012
Daniel Brock was happily teaching. Then he heard about jobs in the oil fields of North Dakota. Now he's happily working there.

For public good, not for profit.

Railroads profit from oil boom in North Dakota

Dec 10, 2012
Trains haul fracking supplies into the region and haul oil out of it. The oil boom comes at a good time: the railroads' mainstay, coal, is in a slump.

Oil boom family is cramped but together

Dec 5, 2012
A year after her husband moved to North Dakota's oil fields from their home in Missouri, Shannon Atwell picked up her four boys and joined him.

The oil boom: Born to be a roughneck

Dec 4, 2012
Richard Karpe had his first roughneck job at age 11, on a rig run by his stepfather. He talks about the roughneck life and its hazards.