The Casper Star Tribune reported on May 25, that the state continued to loose population in 2017. Casper, the state's second biggest city, dropped down to about 57,000, putting it down to where it had been 20 or more years ago.
Of course, that figure is more than a little off as in the last 20 years Bar Nunn has really grown and so has Mills, so those figures are more than a little offset by the two adjoining communities which make up the larger metropolitan area, together with Evansville.
Still, that's pretty interesting as the price of oil was claiming at the same time.
That might mean something, or nothing at all.
Eh?
That Casper in particular and Wyoming in general lost population in the last several years is no surprise, but in 2017 petroleum and coal prices were stable. For that matter, petroleum prices climbed. Based on the old model, that should have meant a slow climb in employment figures, but it appears we really aren't seeing that. Why not?
Well, we actually may be. They may must just not be as much as expected and there could be an attendant fall in other areas. But it could also be due to technology.
One thing that has really been missed in the analysis and close watching of petroleum prices is that insiders in the industry have been predicting that when the price of oil climbed and exploration picked up, the return of the exploration end of the industry would feature a much more high tech industry than previously.
Almost completely missed, but well known to those who are familiar with the industry, is the fact that the last boom featured a combination of a lot of new equipment and a mass amount of old. When the directional drilling boom hit the United States did not have a lot of high tech rig within its boundaries. We tend not to think of ourselves like this, but our exploration infrastructure really went back to the 1970s. Given the price of oil between the 1970s and the 1990s there had been no real reason to have high tech rigs in the US, but they did exist. They were in use in the hot oil provinces overseas. Indeed, some workers who returned to the US to work in the 1990s boom were shocked about how primitive the industry was here, even as new fracking and directional technologies came in. One such worker I know wanted to return to the Middle East to work just because he found American rigs so primitive and dangerous.
Things will be different this time. New rigs started to come in during the 1990s and they are out there now. As the industry contracted recently it meant the old stuff could go. Insiders feel that the old stuff won't be coming back.
Does that meant that a predicted drilling boom like that predicted for Converse County will have no impact on the workforce? Not hardly. But it may wall mean that predictions regarding that could be off significantly. And where that boom may be felt may be quite off the mark. The petroleum industry, much like other sectors of the economy, may start to be a lot more clicks and storkes than nuts and bolts that it use to be.
Before we leave this, there's a couple of other interesting aspects of this. One is that at least in Casper the building seems to go on and on even while the population is falling. It makes no sense at all unless the developers are gambling that there's going to be a big increase in the local population as the drilling starts in the neighboring county. South Casper has an apartment building going up that, by my uneducated guess, would easily house 1/5th of the entire number of people predicted to be coming in. Subdivisions continue to be developed, although at a much slower pace than previously.
Learning what is going on in the real estate industry at any one time is darned near impossible as the industry, like most others, has no real interest in being too open about market conditions at any one time. However, it can't possibly be the case that there are waiting residents for all of these homes at the same time the population of the town is declining. If this gamble doesn't pay off for them, there's going to be a real vacant building mess.
Regarding the use of the term "mess", one thing that might not be regarded as a mess, among long time residents, is the decline in population. It's a dirty little secret of the local view, but quite frankly, most long time or native Wyomingites don't cry about declining population figures. Indeed, if you look where people are free to comment anonymously, they tend to be happy about it. The way that most Wyomingites figure it a declining population means that a lot of Texans, Oklahoman's and the like went back home and left those of us from here, here. And most Wyomingites are okay with that.
Which gets us back to a different economy, such as Galeotos has been talking about, and like we've talked about before here. It's hardly articulated, but what Wyomingites hope for is not so much that any one sector does super, but rather that there are enough jobs for people who grow up here and want to stay. That's a pretty difficult thing to achieve, but that's what folks generally hope for. The booming dreams of politicians tend not to really reflect their views very much.
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