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Oil machine rolls out millionaires
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ASIANAGE on 04 July, 2008 02:51:14
 
By JAMES MACPHER
BEULAH
July 4: Mr Oscar Stohler, was raised in a sod house in western North Dakota and
ranched there for nearly seven decades. He never gave much thought to what lay
below the grass that fattened his cattle.
When oilmen wanted to drill there last year, Mr Stohler, 83, doubted oil would
be found two miles underground on his property. He even joked about it. "I told
them if they hit oil, I was going to buy a Cadillac convertible and put those
big horns on the front and wear a 10-gallon hat," Mr Stohler recalled.
He still drives his old pickup and wears a mesh farm cap, but it’s by choice.
In less than a year, Stohler and his wife, Mrs Lorene, 82, have become
millionaires from the production of one well on their land near Dunn Center, a
mile or so from the sod home where Oscar grew up. A second well has begun
producing on their property and another is being drilled, all aimed at the
Bakken shale formation, a rich deposit that the US Geological Survey calls the
largest continuous oil accumulation it has ever assessed.
Landowners in western North Dakota have a much better chance of striking it
rich from oil than they do playing the lottery, say the Stohlers. Some of their
neighbors in the town of about 120, from bar tenders to Tupperware salespeople,
have become "overnight millionaires" from oil royalty payments.
"It’s the easiest money we’ve ever made," said Mr Lorene Stohler, who
worked for decades as a sales clerk at a small department store.
State and industry officials say North Dakota is on pace to set a state
oil-production record this year, surpassing the 52.6 million barrels produced in
1984. A record number of drill rigs are piercing the prairie and North Dakota
has nearly 4,000 active oil wells.
The drilling frenzy has led companies to search for oil using horizontal
drilling beneath Parshall, a town of about 980 in Mountrail County, and under
Lake Sakakawea, 180-mile-long reservoir on the Missouri River.
"I have heard, anecdotally, that there is a millionaire a day being created in
North Dakota," said Mr Ron Ness, president of the North Dakota Petroleum
Council.
Mr Kathy Strombeck, a state Tax Department analyst, said the number of "income
millionaires" in North Dakota is rising.
The number of taxpayers reporting adjusted gross income of more than $1 million
in North Dakota rose from 266 in 2005 to 388 in 2006, Mr Strombeck said. — AP