Oil Production Tops Economic Report
North Dakota is riding a massive energy boom to clinch the title of the nation's hottest economy.
According to the the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, the state's economy has continued to outpace all other states for the past four years. And the growth from certain industries might surprise you.
This is the third year in a row that North Dakota took the top spot in BEA's state-by-state report on a gross domestic product. But the driving factors behind the growth is not the state's agricultural industry. The report lists mining, which includes drilling for oil and gas for adding 3.6 percentage points, to North Dakota's 9.7 total growth. This follows a downward trend for the ag industry in the last few years, but Ag Commissioner Doug Goehring says it's been a tough time for farmers in the Peace Garden State.
"Agriculture and energy are going to be our two leading industries in North Dakota. I guess that given the fact that we've kind of expected it. We've had major difficulties putting crops in the ground last year. We had 20 percent of our acreage in North Dakota that wasn't planted and the market kind of imploded. We ended up getting 40 to 60 percent less than price on commodities so, I kind of suspected that ag was going to slip quite a bit. This isn't about competing it's about coexisting and about those leading spots in our economy," says Goehring. "Energy and Agriculture are our state's two leading industries. I think they compliment each other well. I don't know that it's oil versus agriculture or energy versus agriculture, I don't look at it that way I think they fit well together. And I think both are going to grow together in the future," says Ron Ness of the North Dakota Petroleum Council.Commissioner Goehring says that holding the top spot as the leading economic growth is good for farmers morale.
