Baker Hughes Williston, North Dakota

This Baker Hughes building is across the street from a large Halliburton equipment yard in the sprawling oil services engineering area west of the town of Williston. Williston was the heart of a major oil and gas boom in the Bakken shale formation under western North Dakota, spurred by well-fracking technology employed and serviced by companies such as Baker Hughes and Halliburton, two of the largest oil field service companies in the world, and both based out of Houston. The boom in oil and gas production enabled by these technologies led to US energy independence, and to booms and busts that rapidly transformed many previously small and rural communities around the country, but perhaps nowhere more so then here in Williston.