Tribes disagree on benefits versus harm of oil production

NEW TOWN, N.D. - On oil well pads carved from the wheat fields around Lake Sakakawea, North Dakota, hundreds of pump jacks slowly bob to extract 100 million barrels of crude annually from a reservation shared by three Native American tribes.

About half their 16,000 members live on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation atop one of the biggest U.S. oil discoveries in decades: The Bakken shale formation.

The drilling rush has brought the tribes unimagined wealth - more than $1.5 billion and counting - and they hope it will last another 20 to 25 years. The boom also propelled an almost tenfold spik...

 

Reader Comments(0)