Fracking Brings Real Estate Boom

WATFORD CITY, ND—Geologists tout the arid Bakken region in western North Dakota as the world’s next Saudi Arabia, and thousands of oil workers have begun pouring into its small towns. And although many natural resource booms attract only transient housing, Ken Hartog, one of many real estate entrepreneurs that have relocated to the area, says these towns need permanent built-out communities with new multifamily housing, retail, storage, office space, medical buildings and every other type of real estate.      

“We’re beyond the speculative stage,” he says, “and it’s just getting started.” The United States Geological Survey estimated on April 30 that the region had 7.4 billion barrels of oil recoverable through hydraulic fracturing of the underground shale formations, a 27-year supply at the current rate of production, and about double what the agency estimated in 2008. Four thousand wells have already been drilled and as the hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” technology improves, the amount of recoverable oil will increase even more.