what's happening here in north dakota, where advances in fracking have unlocked crude oil in the bakken shalemation in the western part of the state. north dakota is now producing more than a million barrels of oil a day. ten years ago there were fewer than 200 oil-producing wells in the bakken. now there are more than 8,000. >> they call it boomtown usa this is where all the money is. it's crazy the amount of money you can make here. >> this rapid pace of development and the flood of workers coming here, has given north dakota the lowest unemployment rate in the us. but it's also raised questions

what's happening here in north dakota, where advances in fracking have unlocked crude oil in the bakken shale formation in the western part of the state. north dakota is now producing more than a million barrels of oil a day. ten years ago there were fewer than 200 oil-producing wells in the bakken. now there are more than 8,000. >> they call it boomtown usa this is where all the money is. it's crazy the amount of money

what's happening here in north dakota, where advances in fracking have unlocked crude oil in the bakken shale formation in the western part of the state. north dakota is now producing more than a million barrels of oil a day. ten years ago there were fewer than 200 oil-producing wells in the bakken. now there are more than 8,000. >> they call it boomtown usa this is where all the money is. it's crazy the amount of money you can make here. >> this rapid pace of development and the flood of workers coming here, has given north dakota the lowest unemployment rate in the us. but it's also raised questions over the dangers of working in the oil fields. >> the more jobs you complete, the more money you make. the faster you complete them, the faster you can get to the next job. let's say i mean you take your time. if you be safe, you are not i bet you could cut your pay in half. >> fault lines spent six months investigating some of the risks in north dakota's oil fields and uncovered a dark side to the boom. >> a lot of these workers come to north dakota, get chewed up and go home to recover. i get

america has a lot of shale formation. the bakkennorth dakota, the marcellus in pennsylvania and new york, the woodford in oklahoma, and in texas, the barnett, the eagle ford, and the permian basin. bruce: chevron's history in this basin goes back to the early 1920's. almost at the start of the basin. we are fortunate that we have been here for a long time and have been here consistently. the basin has seen a lot of ups and downs in terms of production. it had been on a gradual and kind of slow decline. and then a number in the industry recognized that unconventional development that had started in the barnett outside of fort worth and dallas could maybe be applied here. and it turned out that that was exactly right. and we are in, you know, a renaissance in the permian basin today. erik: no oil company has more land in the permian basin than chevron. yet chevron missed the first wave of fracking success. the independent producers were faster and more aggressive. >> the shale revolution came on so fast. let's be clear -- so far, the

basic starting point, john, and this is one of the reasons we've been to the bakken, we've been to midland, to the eagleford shale, as a good investment just starting point, should investors look at bakken which is much, much higher cost on average than texas and say i want to avoid bakken heavy? if i want to invest in oil and gas, i should at least look at texas over north dakota? >> you're exactly right, and as you highlighted, the large decreases in continental resources and whiting petroleum reflect those companies' concentrations in the bakken play, and the fact is the bakken has economic that is don't stack up as well when compared to the permian basin and the core window of the eagleford. the primary reason for the relatively poor bakken economics is the price discount on bakken oil, which was recently $8 a barrel. that's a pretty big number when you're around $35 and $40. that's a big impact to the margins plus bakken operating costs are higher and north dakota state production taxes are higher relative to texas state production taxes. you will notice eog fared quite a bit better than continental or whiti