Q&A: How a North Dakota oil boom town could inform Carlsbad's future

Carlsbad struggled in recent years to meet the demands of an oil and gas boom in the Permian Basin.

Unable to meet the current housing needs of a drastic population influx, address aging roads and infrastructure and diversify its economy, the small southeast New Mexican town is working through the largest challenges in its long history.

The City of Williston, North Dakota saw many of the same challenges when oil began booming there about a decade ago. 

Today, the city boasts triple the population, a diverse economy and a bustling downtown and growing millennial population. 

The Current-Argus sat down with Shawn Wenko, director of economic development at the City of Williston to discuss what his town did to capitalize on the boom and survive the sudden growth.

How has Williston’s relationship with the oil and gas industry evolved?

"The major economies that Williston is built on is agriculture, oil and gas and tourism. Agriculture really led the way for a long time then in the past 10 years, oil has taken over the driver’s seat. Oil was discovered here in 1951, and we’ve been through several up and down scenarios, boom and bust scenarios.

"I was born and raised here. And I did what a lot of people did back in the day when I graduated in the early ‘90s which is we moved away because there just wasn’t a lot of opportunity here to stick around.

"Up until about the early 2000s, there was concern in this community that you were seeing a lot of the professional services, the baby boomers were looking to retire and who was going to be the dentist who was going to be the attorneys back in this area."

How did the recent boom impact the city?

"Fast forward to the oil and gas play with the discovery of the Bakken shale and how to extract that oil from the shale, that really took off. We tripled the size of the city, we tripled the size of our population. There was some good and some bad. We got through it until we saw the slow down in 2014.

"The average age has dropped to about 30 years old, so we’re one of the top places for millennials. The job opportunities are here. We’ve also seen a very wide range of diversification in this community. We’re seeing all walks of life come in, all nationalities. You’re seeing that’s reflective of this area. Who would have thought 20 years ago that a sushi restaurant would be successful in Williston?"

How prepared was the city for the boom?

"I wouldn’t say we were ill-prepared. When you have a community like Williston, we’ve been through several ups and downs. There was some cautious optimism when we were going into 2009 and what was happening with the Bakken shale. I don’t think anybody realized the tsunami that was coming our way.

"We did start from behind the game right away. We spent a lot of time trying to catch up. When things slowed down in 2014, you’ll hear a lot of the community officials say that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing because it gave everybody a chance to catch their breath. We slowed down for a couple years and then we picked right back up where we were."

What did the City do to adapt to the growth?

"Trying to address some the infrastructure issues, there were a lot of challenges here. You had so many people come to this area. Housing was a challenge. The infrastructure itself wasn’t equipped to handle the influx of people coming to the area. But you look at what’s gone into Williston and western North Dakota, and we’re talking billions of dollars in infrastructure to help handle the increase in activity.

Today, you’ll see we have a tremendous focus on quality of life development. We’re working with restaurants and retail. We’ve got a huge abundance of jobs in this area. But we can have all the jobs we want but if we have a community no one wants to live in, we’re going to continue to have those challenges.

How has Williston diversified its economy during the boom?

Diversification comes with the longevity of the oil and gas industry. That’s your main industry. If you help keep that up and running, diversification is going to come. We’re seeing that a lot with entrepreneurs.

They’re coming through the doors and they might have an idea that they’re working with oil and gas to help reduce costs and increase efficiencies. We’re saying that product might have some other applications in the municipality sector, the agriculture sector, something like that. That’s where we’re seeing our diversification.

What is the City doing to handle its continued growth?

The city is working to promote more economic growth. It’s adding things to handle the capacity. You see a new $100 million wastewater treatment facility that we put in to handle the growth, a $260 million airport we’re putting in to handle the growth. They built these things for the future. They’re going to build it one time. We didn’t want to build something and two years later it’s not big enough.

Really what you want to look at with this community is you want to make hay while the sun shines. Is there a challenge that the bottom could fall out? Absolutely. I think we’re settling in for some good long-term economic growth. The industry continues to get better with technology. That lowers their break even point.

What does the future of Williston look like?

We priced out 50 years of development in five years. It was nice to get that shot in the arm. Now with the investors and the equity that comes into the area, they look at a more reasonable return on investment than they were 10 years ago. It was kind of a quick in, make good money and cash out.

Today, we’re seeing more long-term investments. I believe this thing has some good legs.

Adrian Hedden can be reached at 575-628-5516, achedden@currentargus.com or @AdrianHedden on Twitter.

This story has been supported by the Solutions Journalism Network, a nonprofit organization dedicated to rigorous and compelling reporting about responses to social problems, www.solutionsjournalism.org

Previously:Oil and gas industry looks to mitigate water waste during boom time