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Oil prices fell in April as the coronavirus devastated global energy markets – and Wyoming’s economy followed.
Anyone who knows the economy of the least populous state will tell you that Wyoming is an energy hub, producing 40% of the country’s coal and 15 times more energy than it consumes. In 2018, its energy production was third only in Texas and Pennsylvania. But by the second quarter of 2020, the state had lost 1 in 5 jobs in the energy sector due to falling prices.
In Douglas, Wyoming, a small town of about 6,000 and the seat of Converse County, most revenue comes from sales tax related to the energy industry, city administrator Jonathan said. Teichert. So far, they have brought in about a third of the income they had at the same time last year.
“We cut our budget by 25% compared to last year, which was probably too optimistic,” he said.
During the oil tank, companies closed wells and laid off workers. Teichert said school enrollment was down this year because unemployed residents simply picked up their families and left. Times have been tough for many residents, left without many employment options and struggling with the surge in Covid-19 cases eight months into the pandemic.
In much of Wyoming, the energy industry “has already secured cheap and easy oil and gas resources,” said Kyle Tisdel, an attorney at the Western Environmental Law Center who studies the booming economy of. the state. Companies have therefore turned to more expensive methods such as horizontal fracturing.
“You talk about a breakeven point of $ 50, $ 60 a barrel, and oil is floating around $ 40 to $ 45,” he said. “All signs are showing that we are not going to be much higher than this for the foreseeable future.”
Without profits, companies leave. “Communities shoulder the burden and are the first to feel the effects,” Tisdel said.
But if you don’t live in the state, Wyoming can seem like the open border, where celebrities like Kanye West go to escape and relax, or maybe lease their land rights to fracking companies.
When California was plagued by wildfires, YouTube and makeup mogul Jeffree Star traveled to his home in Wyoming.
“It’s such a strange atmosphere here in California,” Star said on her Instagram story. “That means it’s time to go to Wyoming, so I’m going to get on the jet right away and run away for a few days.”
This scenario, where energy companies will flee the state at all times, while the super rich flee to the state, is a signal of “structural decline,” Tisdel said.
This summer, as unemployment rose statewide, Jackson Hole, the popular ski destination and one of America’s most economically uneven regions, had a season as busy as ever. The real estate industry has broken records with sales up 14% and more than $ 1.5 billion in real estate spent in the first nine months of 2020.
Yet while businesses might leave, the rich come in part because of Wyoming’s place in the public imagination, said Justin Farrell, professor of sociology at Yale University and author of the book “Billionaire Wilderness. “.
For the wealthy, Wyoming epitomizes escape, both from the pandemic and other issues, where open skies and empty pastures can help clear your mind. While the states locked down, Wyoming remained open. “We have taken social distances for the entire 130 years that we have been a state,” said Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., Said on “Fox & Friends” in April, explaining why Wyoming didn’t. not issued from stay-to-order at home.
The wealthy had already come forward by then, and the way they continue to experience the pandemic is very different from most others in the state. Covid-19, in Wyoming and elsewhere in the country, has exposed these disparities.
If you live on a multi-million dollar ranch in Jackson Hole, you have access to private doctors. You may even have brought your own respirator with you when you fled the state, Farrell said. But elsewhere in the state, where there are only about 5 people per square mile, residents are vulnerable in the labor market and typically lack access to health care. Populations are on average older and in poorer health, and many people live far from clinics.
Luxury pensions like Jackson Hole mean more money spent in the community, sure, but the elites who move to Wyoming, which has no income tax, often do so to get down to business. tax free. Farrell Believes State Politicians “Choose Ultra Health Over Their Neighbors” And Wyoming Needs To Do More To Hold The Big Businesses That Come To Wyoming For Its Resources, “Use Them And Go” And Ditch The Workers that made them rich.
Now, the spread of the virus is out of control in Wyoming, as it is in much of the western interior. The state reported a 475 percent increase in cases at the end of October, and since then the spread has continued. The state has recorded more than 21,300 cases of the coronavirus since the start of the pandemic, including more than 15,000 since October 1.
“The crisis is here and it’s going to get worse,” Farrell said.
In the hard-hit city of New York, about 1 in 32 residents have contracted Covid-19. In Albany County, Wyoming, home to Laramie, it’s about 1 in 18. The state does not have a mask mandate, but Albany County put one in place last week. , just days after a state official who had tested positive for the coronavirus died and the governor announced he had to self-isolate after being exposed to the virus at a meeting that included the group’s coordinator White House Coronavirus Working Dr. Deborah Birx.
In Converse County, Wyoming, public health nurse Darcey Cowardin and her team are working to flatten the curve of their own increase in cases. The border county of just over 13,500 residents recorded 396 cases and as of Friday 118 active cases. These are astronomical numbers for such a small community.
“Our hospital is very badly affected,” Cowardin said. The contact tracer is overwhelmed, the virus is finding its way into schools and masking is a nightmare to apply. Most of the spread comes from family gatherings, bars and local events.
“The bottom has fallen,” Cowardin said of the collapse of the energy sector. “Add the pandemic, and our community and our county have been hit very hard.”
Part of the problem is that for a long time the virus didn’t materialize too strongly in Converse. In August and September, Wyoming had a few dozen cases statewide on a bad day. The crisis unfolding across the country did not appear to be happening, as many residents believed. And when that happened, little hospitals had no way of being ready, and not everyone was on board to stop the spread.
“We are in a community where no one wants to know what to do,” she said. “There’s just this pocket of people who don’t want to accept that it’s a thing.”
Cowardin said a First Amendment group came to the public health department office in Douglas recently, harassing them and filming them after they were asked to wear masks. Phone lines were inundated with people, many from out of state, shouting horrible things at employees.
“It’s so difficult to be in public health right now,” she says.
She also said it was difficult to meet the needs. Food banks and local aid resources are in greater demand than ever. Contact tracing has become so criticized by the cases that the county is no longer able to contact people who need to be quarantined and is asking people with the coronavirus to do their own contact tracing if they can. County residents are left with long-term complications from the disease and deaths are increasing.
Not far from Cowardin’s office in Douglas is the massive ranch of drag queen superstar RuPaul Charles, which spans 60,000 acres. RuPaul told NPR earlier in March that the ranch “is really land management.” It leases mineral and water rights to hydraulic fracturing companies and grazing rights to ranches.
When RuPaul is in and around Converse County, he doesn’t care much about what’s going on around or under him. “I meditate and I pray,” he said. “And I have a good time paying attention to the calm. And there is a lot of calm on the ranch.
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