Don Brunell

In 1951, if farmer Henry Bakken had told you there was oil under his prairie land in Williston, N.D., you’d have thought he was a few bricks short of a load.

As it turns out, he was right.

North Dakota’s economy is going gangbusters, thanks to millions of barrels of oil being recovered from what today is known as the Bakken formation.

The Bakken formation stretches about 200,000 square miles beneath Montana, North Dakota and Saskatchewan. The U.S. portion of the Bakken is estimated to hold up to 10 billion barrels of oil.

The oil is being recovered with a technique that drills down 10,000 to 1...