Page 6 -- The Journal & Tioga Tribune Changing Colors Wednesday, October 14, 2020 Oil is discovered just a few miles from Tioga By Sam Easter forever. The state It was early evening in April now depends on the oil reve- 1951 when Bill Shemorry, nues so much that one industry managing editor of the Williston advocate’s site proudly an- Press-Graphic, got a call from nounces that a massive portion his editor. North Dakota had of the state’s 2017 tax collec- just changed forever. tions came from the oil and gas For months, the Amerada Pe- industry. troleum Corp. had been looking And the oil industry has for oil on Clar- donated handsomely to the ence Iverson’s state’s politicians. The energy wheat farm, near industry is a leading source of Tioga, finding political donations to North mostly nothing. Dakota’s 2019 and 2020 political By one account, races, according to the National the well had Courtesy State Historical Society of North Dakota, William E. (Bill) Shemorry Photograph Collection (1-219-5) Institute for Money in Politics. produced about Executives with Amerada Petroleum pose with the famous photo, The North Dakota Petroleum a pint of unpol- taken in 1951, of the site where economically viable oil was discovered Council, in particular, has given luted oil by January -- without EDITOR’S NOTE: This page contains parts four and five of a series produced in North Dakota. $623,919 during the past 20 drilling mud or water -- but by Forum News Service and the North Dakota Newspaper Association Edu- years to political campaigns as still hadn’t produced anything cation Foundation, reviewing the political history of North Dakota. Century as a productive time But when Bluemle wrote of early September. Nearly two- meaningful. Iverson’s son, Cliff, for North Dakota’s economy. in 2001, he wasn’t sure what thirds of that money has gone recalled in a 2008 Associated It could also be a tumultuous would come next. There was to Republican candidates -- the Press interview that his father ture and shutter settings on my Education Foundation explor- time politically. A fight quickly plenty of oil in North Dakota, historically business-friendly, was nonplussed at oil-hungry 4x5 Speed Graphic.” ing the history of North Dakota. broke out over the future of the but how to get to it was another pro-petroleum party that has corporate men detonating dy- He took “about a dozen What shaped the moments state’s oil wealth in 1953, when question. also made massive gains in namite on his farm. shots,” he recalled, and re- we’re living today? And what the state Senate passed a mas- “Another possibility for new North Dakota politics in recent But on April 4, Shemorry turned to his car as water does our history tell us about sive hike in the oil production or renewed production is the decades. found himself getting into his started to run into his boots. our future? tax and drew a march on the Bakken Formation,” Bluemle The oil business, and the car and, like a moth to a flame, He took off for Minot to get his John P. Bluemle, former state capitol led by the presi- wrote. “However, for that to enormous prosperity it’s making his way out to the huge pictures developed and ready state geologist, remembered dent of the Williston Board of happen, we’d need to see the brought to the state, has helped flare now burning by North for print, and one of the pho- the early oil years in a 2001 City Commissioners. One sub- development of a significant entrench the GOP in power in Dakota’s first fully operational, tographs he’d snapped began pamphlet marking the 50th text, Shemorry recalled in his new technology.” North Dakota, said Mark Jen- productive oil well -- the first of making its way around the anniversary of that April night book, was that eastern counties The solution, of course, was drysik, a UND political scientist. thousands that would dot the world -- from the Fargo Forum on Iverson’s farm. Natural gas wanted -- and would continue hydraulic fracturing, or “frack- That’s not too surprising: In western landscape and trans- to Life to U.S. News and World was first discovered in 1892, to want, for decades more -- to ing,” which opened up the oil-heavy states like Texas or form the state’s future. Reports Magazine. stretching from Jamestown to “stick their finger in the pie.” western half of North Dakota Alaska, the same kind of one- “I came to the turnoff south A few months later, Shemorry Merricourt, and oil wells were Another was the oil industry’s to enormous, renewed interest party rule prevails, he said. of Tioga. A gravel road led to recalled, a Dallas oil speculator drilled in earnest starting in opinion. during the past 20 years. The “They certainly took credit the well,” Shermorry recalled in wanted his own version of the the 1910s, but not much ever “It was pointed out that if Bakken region alone produced for putting oil (wells) in the “Mud, Sweat and Oil,” his 1991 photo, on his own well a short became of them. Bluemle notes this action caused even one about 694,000 barrels of oil in ground and having the foresight book about the early oil days. ways north. Shemorry tried, that in 1915 one well was drilled wildcat well to be drilled in 2000, according to state re- to be able to do that. They were Even when he was still 4 miles but he couldn’t make the photo in Ward County just a few miles another state” Shemorry wrote, cords; 86 million in 2010; and able to spend money in a way from the flare, it was so bright work in the dark. The flare away from where it might have “North Dakota would stand to 186 million this year between that bought out opposition,” -- like daytime, he wrote -- that -- nowhere near the size of the been successful, and where an lose more than the increased January and May. he said. And the sudden influx he’d thought at one point it flame Clarence Iverson’s farm oil well would be placed de- revenue which the higher tax Drake McClelland is today’s of oil money into state coffers, must be just over the next hill. -- simply wasn’t bright enough. cades later. rate could bring in a year’s mayor of Tioga, almost 70 years Jendrysik added -- at least, dur- By the time he arrived, cars Nothing could compare to the But in oil -- as in a lot of time.” after oil was discovered on ing boom times -- meant less were parked everywhere, with awesome, terrifying cloud of things -- missing by a mile was The tax hike didn’t pass. the Iverson farm. He doesn’t infighting over the future of the hundreds turning out to see the fire he’d seen in April. as good as missing by 20. Noth- The dawn of fracking remember the excitement of the budget. flame. Missing by a mile ing would come of it. It was North Dakota’s relationship 1950s -- just the press of people, But the arc of state politics Shemorry wanted to get To say that oil has trans- followed by years of searching with oil unfolded over the next from everywhere, coming to is long. Jendrysik said that, closer. He sloshed into a pool of formed North Dakota would be that never struck a steady sup- few decades in tandem with work the oil fields. People in eventually, it bends toward melted snow, wearing his “hip- a hopeless understatement. It ply of economically viable oil. history and with the natural tents, families living in cars and something like a Democratic- boots,” and the roar of the flare has, in a word, remade it -- re- Until 1951. rhythm of oil drilling. Produc- sending kids to school. A lot of NPL resurgence. and the bright light made him fashioning not only the fabric of In the following years, North tion would spike after discov- people came, he said, “to make “No matter what they do (in wonder if the entire contraption state politics and finances but Dakota’s annual oil production ery -- like in 1951 -- then taper money quick.” the short term), they’re going -- bony steel framework soaring quite literally remaking its west- grew quickly, to more than 27 off, surging again alongside “The thing was, though -- the to stay in power,” Jendrysik over the searing light -- might ern reaches, bringing droves of million barrels in the late 1960s global price or embargo or boom came as fast as it went said of the state Republican explode. people and construction. and to more than 52 million bar- unrest. Bluemle pointed out away,” he said. “And then when Party. “The unfortunate side to “The light was so bright I This is the fourth story in rels in the early 1980s. The rest that OPEC’s 1970s oil embargo it did come back, a lot of the that, of course, it makes you didn’t worry about getting a a series produced by Forum of Bluemle’s pamphlet -- which was one of the most important oil companies learned to slow sloppier. It makes the party good picture,” he later wrote. “I News Service and the North excerpts Shemorry’s book -- events in Williston Basin’s oil down.” complacent, because you think could easily read all the aper- Dakota Newspaper Association recalls the latter half of the 20th history. But the oil has changed it’s going to last forever.” and the Dem-NPL golden years By Sam Easter On Nov. 2, 2010, Rep. Earl Pomeroy, D-N.D., was hours away from the end of his politi- cal career. He didn’t know it for sure yet -- he was clinging to a slim hope he might survive -- but he could feel that the po- litical tides, turning in North Da- kota for decades, might finally drag him under. Before results came in, he wrote a concession speech. In just a few hours, he’d deliver it. Just a short walk away, at another Fargo Hotel, ’s night was going well. The former state House majority leader -- and Earl Pomeroy now a GOP congressman-elect -- was crowing about a sudden, seismic shift. “Two years ago, people wanted change,” Berg told the crowd. “But what they wanted was for Washington to change.” , and Arthur Link at Democratic-Non Partisan League State Convention, April They got their wish. Pome- 5, 1986, prior to Art Link escorting Kent Conrad to the podium to receive the convention endorsement roy’s departure meant that, for for the Senate. the first time in three decades, the state’s lone congressman This is the fifth and final installment in a series produced by -Fo wouldn’t be a Democrat. And across the country, the Tea rum News Service and the North Dakota Newspaper Association Party revolution was sweep- ing Democrats away. The GOP Education Foundation exploring North Dakota’s political history, all would pick up 63 U.S. House leading up to the events of the last few years -- when a state run by seats -- the biggest power shift in the chamber in more than 60 Democrats suddenly became deep red. years. It’s hard to pick a date when then the state had become so crats’ failures in less flattering precisely how hard a road the the Democratic-NPL’s golden red it became hard to imagine terms. In his retelling, the party party has ahead. She ran for years ended. One answer might when there might be another couldn’t read the economic tea state tax commissioner in 2018 be in the early 1990s, when the statewide Democrat again. leaves, and crucially lost rural -- the same office that boosted governorship slipped away. In “Nothing stays the same, and areas as farms got bigger by the careers of North Dakota’s an interview, former Sen. Byron so North Dakota’s economy backing the wrong farm poli- last three Democratic sena- Dorgan called ’s 1992 changes,” Pomeroy said -- like cies. tors. She didn’t win; but, she win a watershed: It meant the farms getting bigger, smaller But there’s far more in the said, she has to believe that the GOP could suddenly control the towns withering and the arrival state’s sudden shift. The rise of party can return. Otherwise flow of political appointees and of an oil industry reshaping conservative media has helped she wouldn’t be able to do her build a political bench -- ensur- state politics. The knockout change the loyalties of small- work. ing they’d have better candi- round came in 2010, but the town America, and political “As someone who’s also been dates in elections to come. GOP had been punching stron- alignment is now as much ur- a candidate, it’s not always Another moment might be ger for years. ban-rural as have vs. have-not. winning that’s been the most as late as 2018, when Sen. Heidi Opinions differ. Sen. Kevin And the racial demographics of important success,” she said. Heitkamp lost to then-GOP Rep. Cramer, the man who finally the U.S. are shifting quickly. “It’s changing the conversation, , surrendering the defeated the last Democratic Kylie Oversen, the Demo- and making sure that voters party’s last statewide office. By incumbent in 2018, puts Demo- cratic-NPL chairwoman, knows have choices.”