Hi, my name is Nick Preet and I'm a documentary filmmaker and I would like to tell you a little
bit about fracking and now not about the economic and environmental impacts of fracking because
that's already been told.
You know, I want to tell you about the men who come in and work to get our natural gas
and the conditions that they are living in.
Now imagine a place where there's not a whole lot to look at, not a whole lot to do, you
know, just grasslands.
Well, that's North Dakota and especially in the Balkan oil field, like places like Sydney
and Williston, these places have just exploded, thousands and thousands of men come in looking
for money and looking for work, sort of like the modern day gold rush.
Now, they come in here and you can earn upwards of $20 an hour or more working, you know,
you don't have to be skilled, you don't, you know, you could have a record, whatever.
You can find a job here, but it's not easy work.
It's really actually difficult grinding work.
The prices of everything out there have just skyrocketed through the roof.
These places used to be small tight-knit communities where, you know, you would know your neighbor
and now they're booming cities with thousands and thousands of men who just come in there.
And what happens is a lot of times people will just sleep in their cars in Walmart parking
lots and, you know, and I'm not just talking about a few people, the whole parking lot
is full just about every night.
Any open area, you know, like truck stops, all those places are just full to the brim
with truckers sleeping in their cars, workers sleeping in their cars, you know, so much
so that Walmart actually had to make a rule saying that no one could sleep there anymore.
And you know, those aren't the only problems.
For instance, McDonald's can't stay open past 6 p.m. because they'd have to pay anybody
who works there $20 an hour, otherwise they'll just go work at the patch.
You know, the police force can't keep up with the demand.
This is a small-town police force that hasn't been able to grow with the demands of all
these people coming in.
You know, just in the past few years, the population has just, you know, quadrupled.
The roadways are having problems with them because they can't fix them fast enough, alright?
And you know, these people come in here and they don't have anywhere to sleep.
So that's why they're sleeping in the Walmart parking lots.
So all of a sudden these man camps have just exploded out there.
And a man camp is where 6 to 8 people, 6 to 8 men specifically, sleep in a single wide
trailer, just end on end.
They have, they're called the camp because they're just trailers, one after the other
after the other after the other.
And you know, because these guys need something to live in.
And if you want to go live by yourself, you can't pull in the money for it because a small
pot of land that maybe nowadays would cost, you know, $10,000, $20,000 is now worth thousands
of dollars just because of supply and demand.
You know, like I said, it's the gold rush, these people come in looking for money and
they get extorted, really, really extorted.
And that's what I want to talk about in this documentary is because, you know, maybe some
kids come in, you know, it's a story that's told over and over again out there is kids
at a high school, you know, maybe unemployed or whatever, they come in to get some money
and then they end up spending it all on toys.
It's like, you give a kid this much money and they're going to just go blow it.
And then once they do, they can't dig themselves out of that hole.
So what do they do?
They turn to drugs, you know, they try to make themselves feel better, but it just makes
all the problems worse.
And so I'm telling you, this is a really, really difficult life out there, you know.
You think you're going out there to make a bunch of money and you're not, you know, and
if you are, you're working your life away every day.
And especially if you want to send something home to your family, which a lot of people
do, you know, they come from all of the United States, want to send home money to their families
and it's really difficult, it's really difficult life, you know, it's really wild out there
and it's just crazy.
And that's a story I want to tell, you know, that's a story I want to bring to the public.
I want to open your guys' eyes to you and trust me, it's going to be a wild ride.
