In oil glut, fewer oil rigs mean less work

The collapse of global oil prices is helping to show stock markets the way down. Over the last year, the industry that’s taken the biggest hit is energy. Every company in the energy sector of Standard & Poor’s 500 index is now at least 10 percent below its peak, and some much more.

The drop has been hard on the people working for those companies, too. The way to deal with too much oil is to stop drilling for it, after all. A lot of those people are relative newcomers to North Dakota who moved there to work in the Bakken oil field.

Steve Brown is one of them. He moved to the Bakken at its peak and started hauling water to oil rigs. Now the rig count is the lowest in six years. 

Click the above media player to hear the interview with Steve Brown. 

Melby’s story is part of a series called “Black Gold Boom,” an initiative of Prairie Public and the Association of Independents in Radio.