| T/C In | Shot Description |
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| 00:00:14 | Aerials of drilling rig Dog barking | CT/VO Welcome to the energy revolution turning world politics on its head.
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| 00:00:25
| Trucks Shots of Williston People walking down street Man steps in puddle | CT/VO: This is Williston, North Dakota; in the middle of the prairie, its less than 130 km from the border with Canada.
Until seven years ago, this was a sleepy town in the middle of nowhere, with twelve thousand inhabitants. Now there are three times as many people here. |
| 00:00:53 | Interview reporter and Tom Rolf in office | Interview: Wouter: “You’re in charge of the only recession-free town in the United States right?”
Tom: “Yeh I’m afraid so. Hopefully we can help turn the rest of the country around.”
Wouter: “Is it true there’s zero unemployment almost?”
Tom: “0.3. It’s actually harder to find housing than it is to find a job.” |
| 00:01:16 | Aerials of area around Williston, North Dakota Cars on road Drilling rig People f illing in forms at job centre Tom Rolf’s Office | CT/VO: Williston is in the middle of an area fifteen times larger than the Netherlands.
And in the deep subsurface of the area, in the shale rock, are colossal gas and oil reserves.
The method for extracting it from the ground was only recently discovered.
And since then, Williston has become a new frontier, fuelling a new gas and oil fever. A boomtown in the truest sense of the word.
Tom Rolf is the city's main economic developer. His family, descended from Norwegian immigrants, have lived in this town for four generations. Rolf is something of a local celebrity. |
| 00:01:58 | Interview Reporter and Tom Rolf | Interview: Tom: “If I could get you driving a truck, you could probably make a 100 k per year.”
Wouter: “Just as a truck driver?”
Tom: “I got a lot of trucks.”
Wouter: “So why would I want to work at McDonalds if I could make 100k dollars?
Tom: “That’s the problem.”
Wouter: “McDonalds can’t find anything, can’t find the workers.”
Tom: “Yeh, well they’ve got to work hard for it, got to pay the workers a lot more.” Wouter: “Alright, let’s go.” |
| 00:02:19 | Trucks Drilling rig Sign ‘Drivers Wanted’ Large oil trucks | CT/VO:
The gas fields have proven so rich that the price of gas in the US has decreased by as much as 70% in recent years.
And that’s before the construction of the pipelines needed to deliver the gas is even complete. |
| 00:02:37 | Interview reporter and Tom Rolf, with drilling rig behind Unfinished piplines | Interview: Wouter: “In Europe it’s natural gas that comes out of the ground, here it seems to be a lot oil. What do you do with the gas?”
Tom: “Initially when we drill the well, we will flare it, but as we start drilling methodically down the country road we’re going to pipe it all. And it’s all going to have to go to a gas plant, and what that plant is there for is not just to get the natural gas, but the beauty of our natural gas is that it’s heavy in natural gas liquids.” |
| 00:03:10 | Trucks on road | CT/VO Thanks to the shale revolution, America is now completely gas-independent. In the future by condensing the gas into liquid, it will be readily exported - even across oceans. |
| 00:03:23 | Trucks lined up - view from car Tom Rolf Flames | Quote: Tom: “Trucks, trucks, trucks.” |
| 00:03:30 | Aerial of Williston at night | T/VO But for now, the gas released here is just a byproduct of oil extraction, burned to reduce the environmental impact
Recent satellite photos show that at night this remote region shines brighter than New York city..
But how exactly does this revolutionary drilling technique work? |
| 00:03:54 | Interview with Tom Rolf in front of drilling rig, demonstrating technique Shot across river to refinery Motorway Electricty station Train
| Interview: Tom: “In the old days you wanted to drill down two miles, go through a layer a 100ft thick, and then you perforate it around that well. Today what we do is go down two miles, and then we angle into that layer, and we follow it for two miles.”
Wouter: So you first go down vertically, and then horizontally you just...”
Tom: “And once we drill that, then we actually go in there and blast holes incrementally, sideways, and under high pressure pump water and sand in a jell-like liquid trying to fracture the rock, because it’s really dense rock, like a tombstone rock or marble, but it’s shale. So you fracture the rock with pressure, but then you try to get sand into those cracks, because sand’s got porosity. And so that oil will leak out of the shale, into the sand back to the pipe, and just like the roots of the tree bring water back up the trunk.”
Wouter: “And it solves the energy problem for the United States?”
Tom: “Maybe, maybe, for a long time.” Wouter: “No Middle Eastern oil necessary any more?”
Tom: “Exactly. And it’s such a nice quality oil.”
Wouter: “That changes the world politics.”
Tom: “Very much so. And economics.”
Wouter: “Who would have thought? North Dakota, changing the world.”
Tom: “Exactly, it’s a revolution.” |
| 00:05:18 | Interview - Rob de Wijk DUTCH Oiltanking Busy powerlines
| “It is an absolute revolution. It has enormous consequences. This is simply a game changer. A major shift in American politics and economics with major geopolitical consequences. A superpower wants to be independent in the field of oil and gas. If you are independent in that area then you do not need to worry about all those countries where that stuff comes from, which are often unstable countries, because we know that many conflicts are fed by energy and raw materials. That is an enormous conflict. And you don’t need to worry about that. These conflicts can be left to others, to Europe for example. And your own country itself can focus more of challenges for its own interest, like China.
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| 00:06:13 | Rob de Wijk is sunny office Long corridor at dusk René Peters | CT/VO Rob de Wijk is the Netherlands’ expert on international relations. |
| 00:06:23 | Interview - René Peters - DUTCH Shows map of Europe and World/charts on Laptop | “Basically shale gas is the same as natural gas. It is only in a more difficult layer. Where is shale gas to be found worldwide? Traditionally most of the gas is in Russia and the Middle East, in countries such as Qatar and Iran. Shale gas is much more widespread over the world. In a number of countries in large quantities: in Argentina, Brazil, South Africa , but also, for example in China and Australia. |
| 00:06:51 | Car Petrol station/gas station View of ‘man-camps’ Container homes Parking lots
| CT/VO In America, boomtown Williston is not holding back.
There is a shortage of labor and a huge shortage of housing.
Men come from all over to work in the shale industry, and are placed in so-called ‘man-camps’. Container Homes.
Others live in campers in parking lots. Cost: $ 1100 per month for a place in the mud. |
| 00:07:18 | Interview with Tom Rolf Camper vans, mobile homes Number plates from different states | Interview:: Tom: “People wanted to park these on any street in town, and some even somebody’s backyard and next to a business, and so forth. And we want to have an orderly community.”
Wouter: “So these are people from all over the United States?”
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| 00:07:44 | Apartments, housing | CT/VO It’s full blown Shale fever: a patch of soil that until recently cost a few dollars, is now worth hundreds of thousands.
House prices in this remote town now rival the ones you’d find in central new york.
A one-bedroom apartment costs $ 3000 per month. Unaffordable for most. |
| 00:08:04 | Interview with woman, reporter, and Tom Rolf Mobile home | Interview::
Wouter: “But the city is building apartments...”
Woman: “Yeh, at $3,000 dollars a shack.”
Tom: “Well yeh, it’s going to be supply and demand.”
Woman: “No, you don’t rip people off.”
Tom: “Well people do.”
Woman: “There’s no one building here. There’s no one making it so we can have homes. We’re iced up, our water freezes, we have children. I have a little one. We’re iced up all the time, our pipes break, we’re cold. We’re tired of it, we’ve been doing it for 3 years.” |
| 00:08:47 | Tom Rolf in car | Quote: Tom: “Her point is we’re making the trillions of dollars" "But she’s here to make money, and she’s making the big money, but she still calls it hell on earth. Well, if she wanted to go to heaven she should have stayed where she was I guess, you know. But she wasn’t making any money.” |
| 00:09:04 | Flames Pick-up trucks | CT/VO It’s a slightly less attractive side of the American dream.
So far it is mostly men who come to Williston. They work 12 hours on, 12 hours off, fourteen days in a row.
Truck drivers earn 100K a year here, managers like Todd Farley at least 400/500k. |
| 00:09:25 | Interview manager Todd Farley | Interview:: Todd: “You’ve got to stop and figure we’re away from our families, I’m a 1,000 miles away from home. I come up, this customer that I’m working for now, you know they tell me I work two weeks on two weeks off, it’s two months. I work seven days I week, my average day is an 18-hour day.”
Wouter: “It’s time for you to start enjoying your money then,”
Todd: “Yeh, we’ll I’ve got plenty of toys.” |
| 00:09:52 | Nighttime in Williston Outside stripper club Inside stripper club Motorway shots Netherlands | CT/VO Waitresses in cafes and diners easily pocket tips of $ 800 per day. Strippers and lapdancers are flown in from Las Vegas. They earn at least $ 2 to 3000 in one night. |
| 00:10:11 | Interview - René Peters - DUTCH
| “In red you see oil, in blue the gas. The dark color is unconventional, let say the shale oil and gas. So you see where America had merely a decreasing oil and gas production in the recent decades and that they have an increase again in both oil and gas production in the last decade. This is mainly due to the unconventional oil and gas….shale oil-and-gas, which is booming at this moment.
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| 00:10:4016 | Wine turbines Coal ship/container | CT/VO One of the consequences of the shale revolution, and low prices of cleaner gas, is that the USA barely uses coal. anymore. |
| 00:10:53 | Interview - René Peters - DUTCH Coal Production | “It follows, for example in the United States, that because of the low gas prices Coal in Ameica is expensive in America and is exported to Europe to be exploited here.
Question journalist: In main power stations? Yes.
As a result, here the main power plants for gas are shut and electricity is largely generated by coal.
ournalist: So the Americans dump their redundant coal here, and there are more european coal plants while gas plants shut?
That means that CO2 emissions increase in Europe while they decrease in America.
Journalist: That is a peculiar development.
Yes, that means that a country like America, which has never signed Kyoto realizes a reduction of CO2 emissions while Europe with its strong drive to realize CO2 emissions targets achieves the opposite.
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| 00:11:49 | Coal | CT/VO The shale revolution in America is compromising the greening of energy Europe.
Since the gas deposits became exploitable, American coal exports to Europe have increased fivefold. The question is, what do the environmental lobby think of this revolution. |
| 00:12:07 | Interview Sanne van Keulen, Greenpeace representative - DUTCH
| Greenpeace does not believe that shale gas is the solution. Shale gas leads to great problems for the environment anyway. It is still a fossil fuel. Furthermore, methane leaks are released when shale gas is obtained by drilling. Besides that, we do not need this fuel. |
| 00:12:22
00:12:57 | Archive Footage: DUTCH | In the 60's man poked holes in the crust of the earth in a number of inconsiderable places. The result was amazing. Powerful rays of energy spurted up: natural gas . And when it was measured, the stock in the soil was as breathtaking as to be so great that nobody in the country dared to mention the figure. Natural gas is a flame that leads to a new period of comfort and prosperity.
CT/VO It was the largest natural gas field in Europe. At times, almost 20 percent of all government revenue in the Netherlands came from natural gas. It essentially funded the formation of the Dutch welfare state. |
| 00:13:15 | Archive footage: Drills Fields with drills in it Laying of pipes | CT/VO Fast forward 40 years and those state revenues have begun to fall. The Groningen gas field is now two-thirds empty.
And in about ten years, the Netherlands will not be able to meet its gas needs, depending on gas-exporting countries like Russia.
After 60 years, it must pay for gas, instead of earning from it. The extraction of shale gas could postpone this for years. |
| 00:13:54 | Interview with Mirjam Bemelmans, protestor
Rene Peters, Director of TNO
Bridge trucks, snowy landscape, back in North Dakota | The first thing we fear is massive climate change. Methane comes up with shale gas.It’s a greenhouse gas 25 times worse than the ordinary CO2. Then there is another huge problem: the question of clean water. One needs clean water in order to inject the chemicals for fracking. That dirt comes up with benzene, arsenic, which our crops absorb.Then we’ll get sick.
If you want to develop shale gas in Europe you may not catch the production water with chemicals and gases in open basins. It should be in closed basins. So the risk of leaking chemicals and methane evaporating in the open air,will not occur in Europe because of the strict environmental legislation. |
| 00:14:51 | Interview Todd Farley Farley in 4x4 | Interview: Todd: “If you don’t try something how will you know that it doesn’t work?”
Wouter: “Well we’re listening to the environmentalists.”
Todd: “I deal with them, I have dealt with them in the past, and it’s like talking to a rock on the ground, they get something in their head and they put blinders on.”
Wouter: “They don’t want to listen.”
Todd: “They don’t want to listen, they don’t want to try nothing. They say oh my gosh look at what they did Well learn from other people’s mistakes but don’t stop going forward. I mean that’s part of life, everybody, you stumble you fall, you going to quit walking?” |
| 00:15:33 | Jobfair | CT/VO Back in the US it’s full steam ahead. Once a month there is a job market in Williston, which is always packed. |
| 00:15:42 | Interview with man at jobfair | Interview:: Wouter: “Sir, can I ask where you’re from?”
Man: “California.”
Wouter: “California! Looking for a job obviously?”
Man: “And I know they are here, because I was here last year and come over to town and 3 days later I was working. And today I’m looking to peak that record. I want a job today.” |
| 00:15:53 | People filling in job applications
Interview with Tom Rolf
People looking around for jobs | Wouter: “And how many percent of people here today will walk out with a job offer today?”
Man: “It’s hard to know, but I would say, well, we probably need to hire everybody that’s walked in the door, so if we can find them the right job.. Probably biggest issue is where they’re going to live.” |
| 00:16:12 | Interview, two men from Florida | Interview:
Man: “Well yeh I think we did. We got lucky with this one company, and they gave us what they call a letter of promise, a hiring letter. So now we just basically wait and see when they call us in. Take a drug test.”
Wouter: “Where are you from?”
Man: “We’re from Florida actually.”
Wouter: “Florida! What are you doing here in the cold?”
Man: “We’re trying to get gainfully employed as the housing market took a downside, we’re trying to do what it takes to survive right about now.” |
| 00:16:41 | Drilling rig | CT/VO |
| 00:16:57 | Interview Rob De Wijk, Director HCSS | We already know that a lot of wealth will come to the United States because it actually becomes a sort of energy paradise. We know that almost 100 billion dollars in economic activity is created. It is definitely a viagra for the economy, with enormous consequences. |
| 00:17:17 | Trucks
Plane tacking off, private planes on runway | CT/VO
Recently the bosses of companies like Akzo Nobel, DSM, BASF, Shell and Dow Chemical have not dismissed moving to America for lower energy prices. |
| 00:17:36 | Interview with Peters | They say that nowadays the price differences between America and Europe are SO big that it is difficult to make more profitable investments in chemistry in Europe. In any case, the companies will not choose for Europe for new investments as in the long run the gas price is not expected to decrease anytime soon. |
| 00:17:57 | Views of rig | CT/VO |
| 00:18:12 | Interview with De Wijk | This is about our future energy utilities. This is about how we can keep up the economy in our country for now and for the future. This is about the safety of Europe in connection with what is happening in the Middle East and North Africa. There is a direct relationship, it is a very complex problem. That you for once have to address integrally. If you don’t do that, you lose. So we're on our own and at the same time you see that European Forces are phasing out. That is what many politicians absolutely don’t realize. And that this is going on at this moment with enormous implications for the security of Europe. |
| 00:18:5814 | Drilling rigs | Whatever conclusions the public debate reaches, it’s clear that the Shale Gas revolution is well under way, and the global politics of energy provision have changed forever. |
| 00:26:23 | OUT |
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