Good pay, hard work, drug tests required
JAMES MacPHERSON Associated Press writer | Posted: Wednesday, July 6, 2005 12:00 am
WILLISTON, N.D. - Kalem Johnston makes $25 an hour as an oil field roughneck, working 12-hour shifts for a week straight followed by a week off.
"I like it," Johnston said. "It's hard, dirty work, but the pay's good."
Johnston, 23, had no oil field experience until five months ago. But he was willing to come to North Dakota, work hard, and he passed a drug test. Oil companies wish there were more like him, said Lynn Helms, the director of North Dakota's Oil and Gas Division.
Helms said some 250 workers are needed immediately in North Dakota's oil patch. He estimated that at least 10 more rigs could be operating if crews were available. Each active oil rig represents about 40 direct jobs and 80 indirect jobs, he said.
The drug test is a stumbling block for many would-be roughnecks; only about one of every four applicants pass the test.
"The drug test does seem to be a big deal for a lot of those young people," Williston Mayor Ward Koeser said.
But those who pass the prerequisite drug tests get the promise of a big paycheck.
Michael Challans, a 27-year-old roughneck from Lewiston, Mont., who works with Johnston on a drill rig near Alexander, about 20 miles south of Williston, said oil field work in eastern Montana and western North Dakota pays as much as $10 an hour more than about anywhere else.
Challans said he's been working as a roughneck for about four years. It's a grunt job at ground-zero of a drilling crew.
He loves it.
"I got another 10 years easy," Challans said of the roughneck job. He plans on working on other parts of the rig then, as a driller or tool pusher.
Arik MacBlane, 26, also of Lewiston, said his wife has mixed feelings about his job on a drill rig.
"She likes it but she doesn't," MacBlane said. "Everybody likes the money."
Stan Bringhurst, 26, of Spearfish, S.D., said roughnecking is a young man's job. And women don't like it because of the dirt, oil and danger, he said. Roughneckers say they bathe with industrial hand-cleaner.
But there are many willing to tolerate the grime.
"It seems like there are more out-of-state plates in town, more traffic and more activity," Koeser said. "Everybody that I've talked to is saying they're having one of their best years ever."
North Dakota wells were producing about 10,000 more barrels of North Dakota sweet crude each day in June than in June a year ago - a total of about 95,000 barrels of crude daily, the most since 1998. North Dakota now is the eighth-largest oil-producing state in the nation, Helms said.
But Koeser and other longtime Williston residents don't use the term "boom."
Dennis Visser was around during the last oil boom in Williston, which began in the late 1970s and went bust a few years later.
"Young kids were quitting high school and making more money than their dads ever did," Visser recalled. "It didn't last."
Koeser estimated the city's population has grown from 12,500 to about 14,000 over the past five years. But he and Visser know enough to be cautious.
"We're all wary, but we're presently happy," Visser said.
Patrick Hatlestad, of Job Service North Dakota, said starting pay for roughnecks is about $17 an hour during training and increases to about $22 soon after. Most of the jobs don't require experience, but they do require drug screening.
Hatlestad said the jobs aren't for everyone. Many who take the oil patch jobs get "physically whipped. … The attraction is money," he said.
Most other minimum wage jobs in the Williston area have increased by up to $2 an hour over the past year because of the demand for oil patch workers, Hatlestad said.
Mike Ames, owner of Agri Industries in Williston, said he hired five workers from Romania to install crop irrigation systems because he could not find workers in the area. The oil industry's pay scale is more than he can pay, said Ames, who also requires drug tests.
"It bothers me that we have to import labor," he said. "Finding workers is a tremendous challenge even without this oil boom."
He had to increase the pay of his 18 full-time employees to keep pace with the oil industry's wages, he said. Still, he thinks the oil activity has been good for the area's economy. And the oil workers have his respect.
"It's hard, physical work. There is nothing glamorous about it," Ames said. "They earn every dime."