Boom Town finds prosperity - at a price - FT.com The aisles of the Walmart in Williston, North Dakota, are full of something unusual for a supermarket in the US heartland - men. Oil workers coated in dirt and dust, dressed in overalls and fluorescent jackets, peruse microwave meals and tinned meats. A sign outside advertises shelf-stacking jobs for $17 per hour - almost $10 above the federal minimum wage. The car park is clogged with trucks and 18-wheelers; on the approach road, a cortege of exploration awaits its turn. Welcome to Boom Town, USA. Williston sits 10,000 feet above the Bakken shale formation - possibly the largest oil deposit in the country. It has taken 400m years, but technology - horizontal drilling and high-pressure "fracking" - has opened the rock and with it an oil reserve believed to be bigger than Saudi Arabia's. This bounty has the potential to transform the national economy along with US foreign policy: why pursue realpolitik in the Middle East when there is enough energy back home? Since 2004, when the first horizontal well was drilled in North Dakota, towns such as Williston have had little time to reflect. Geology and geography mean that shale oil exploration in the state is relatively labour-intensive. Williston's official population has grown from 12,000 in 2006 to 16,000 in 2012, but locals put the true total at closer to 25,000. Unemployment is something that happens elsewhere. Sweat and oil have brought money but also problems. Demand outpaces supply in almost every market: housing, transport, sewerage and labour. An erstwhile sleepy town, dormant since the previous oil boom in the early 1980s, is still coming to terms with the violent welding of tradition, testosterone and creative destruction. At the Walmart car park, Howard Kanaffler places his shopping in the back of his company truck. The Minnesotan came to Williston for "money, no other reason." He was out of work for a year before taking a $100,000-a-year job laying pipelines. He has saved up $10,000 since arriving in June, which he is accruing for his family back home. But I feel sorry for these young guys. Three months out here: bye bye girlfriend. For the women playing volleyball at the Raymond Family Center recreation facility, concerns about the speed of change are coupled with a desire to be open to newcomers. "Last year was crazy," says Cheryl Powers, an oilrig supervisor. When [CNBC television host] Jim Cramer told everyone to come here, people just showed up with nothing but backpacks. Williston's housing market has been overwhelmed. The median house price has more than doubled in the past three years; monthly rents for two-bedroom apartments are as high as $4,000. Workers unable to find accommodation in "man camps" - prefabricated housing complexes - sleep in caravans or cars in parking lots. The Raymond Family Center has recently limited shower times to 6am to 2pm, so that locals can use the facilities unencumbered by new arrivals. The old folks worry that it's not how it used to be. The new folks worry why they have to spend 45 minutes waiting in line at Walmart," observes Tammy Lyson, a physical education teacher at a local school. The mothers among the volleyball players worry about their children's safety. The number of recorded crimes tripled between 2010 and 2011, and Williston's police admit to being overwhelmed. "There is just a deluge of men," says one woman who does not want to be named. A certain sense of safety has been lost as well as a loss of innocence. However, she does not pine for the "ghost town" version of Williston that she left in the late 1980s before returning this year. I personally think [the shale oil boom] has had a good effect - the diversity of the population is a good thing. All the women at the recreation centre are keen to point out that the trouble derives from a minority of new arrivals. However, until Williston's public infrastructure catches up with its private infrastructure, all expect the problems to continue. The oil boom has brought prosperity, but its impact on housing and labour markets has been highly disruptive. New teachers and police officers, for example, are hard to attract because housing is expensive. The high wages on offer in oil jobs - about $100,000 per year for unskilled workers - make it hard for the local service industry to keep staff. "The oil industry sets the price," says Jeff Peck, owner of Williston's busy McDonald's. It's the inflated economy that we all live in. New employees make $10.50 per hour - $3.25 more than the federal minimum wage - and receive a $300 signing-on bonus. A Big Mac costs a dollar more than a month ago: as wages rise, so, too, do food costs. Yet Mr Peck still loses eight out of 10 staff within two weeks. Williston State College is building a $70m sports centre partly funded by tax revenues from the oil boom. Construction workers live in cabins next to the building site. But enrolment is down, according to Eric Peterson, the college's basketball coach. It's hard when kids with no education can go make $100,000 working on the oilfields. The history of the American frontier is the transformation of nowhere to somewhere. "He must abandon the old ideal and the old gods," wrote Jack London about the Klondike gold rush in the late 1890s. Change is often violent, but soon becomes the norm. In Williston, long-time residents are in shock at the pace of change but few wish the oil was put back in the well. At the recreation centre, Ms Powers explains that she was called "oilfield trash" when she arrived here during the previous boom. I understand the concern. But eventually oilfield trash becomes your neighbour.