There’s definitely some truth to that article but if those problems can b overcome in the 5th world, they can certainly be overcome in SE NM and west Texas.
I now live in Carlsbad NM and the place is literally choking on oil related traffic and people. The town was designed like any 1 of 10000 towns between Cincinnati and Denver. There was absolutely no consideration that something might happen to cause the population to swell dramatically.
There’s effectively 1 road going north-south which parallels the railroad track (more on that later). Going east-west ish has 3 options - north of town, middle of town, and south of town but most of the oil traffic uses the latter 2. There is nothing close to a ‘bypass’ or ring road around town. Everything is funneled thru town. There r dozens of hotels along the N-S road and not far off to each side dozens more of trailer parks and “man camps”. A crappy hotel room costs $100/ngt. There r 3 grocery stores - all along the N-S road.
So the short story is that for a town of 15k population, the traffic feels a lot like an LA freeway at rush hour but with a dozen stop lights and more dust. Fatal or serious injury traffic accidents on the N-S road r a near daily experience which takes some talent when the highest speed limit is 45 mph. The local hospital isn’t equipped to handle a lot of that business. The next best hospital is 50 miles away and it’s still dicey.
The railroad mostly hauls frack sand. Trains run continuously 24 hrs/day. As u might’ve guessed, the E-W ish roads cut across it. No over- or under-passes. Great for the train business, not so good for auto traffic. Horn blasts r incessant.
The trains dump a bunch of the sand at silos north of town. As I said earlier, most of the oilfield workers and their trucks use the 2 southern E-W roads so the trucks that haul the sand from the silos have to do the full monty on roads that didn’t contemplate anything much heavier than a model T and there’s a few 90 degree bends and turns across traffic involved (see traffic accident comment). It’s always good fun to watch a pumping rig ‘4-wheeling’ it across a sidewalk or some other bit of property that is not the road.
Piping seems to also come from the north, I’m guessing the scenic metropolis of Artesia which along with Hobbs are the ‘permanent’ hosts of a lot of oilfield operations (SLB and HAL both have bases in both towns). Those towns r about the same as Carlsbad in terms of my description above as well as population. 1 truck hauls 3 lengths of ~10 m casing. 100s of those lengths can b used in a single well. 100s of wells r being drilled. Lots of trucks and trains and people moving stuff from train to trucks.
So the bottom line is that the support infrastructure and population from which to draw employees is sparse. Once stuff is dumped off a train at 1 of those towns, it has to be hauled at least 50-100 miles by truck - frequently at a snails pace and many of those trucks require accessory ‘flag’ trucks alerting us to the fact that the fat truck is bigger than the road.
I think the guys that would otherwise b working at the dozens of fast food restaurants drive the flag trucks so the fast food restaurants always have hiring signs displayed. Apparently, the list of disqualifiers from the oilfield jobs doesn’t include most felonies so god help those that eat at the fast food restaurants (they seem to get whoever can’t get a job related to oil).
I’m sure there’s some investable knowledge buried in there somewhere
