671: Is it time for North Dakotans to panic over oil revenues?

If North Dakota's oil industry could be represented by a single personality, it would be Continental Resources founder Harold Hamm. So when Hamm says he's laying down his drilling rigs because low oil prices mean there's no margin in operating them, it got a lot of attention from the public.

Oil tax revenues, both directly and indirectly, provide the lion's share of our state's funding. Is it time to panic? Not yet says Justin Kringstad, the executive director of the North Dakota Pipeline Authority.

"No major warning signs to start panicking about, but we'll keep watching it," he said on this episode of Plain Talk. "If the announcement by Continental is the start of something bigger, then absolutely, we certainly need to get on top of that right away and understand what the impacts would be for the state and as a whole."

"We need to watch the rig counts closely," he added.

What prompted Hamm to act, Kringstad said, is a global oversupply of oil. Asked if President Donald Trump's push to bring more Venezuelan oil to the marketplace is a part of that problem, Kringstad said not yet.

"The Venezuelan situation, just stepping back and looking at global oil markets, is not a major impact at all really on any of key markets" for the time being, he said.

Also on this episode, co-host Chad Oban and I discuss the debate over universal school meals at the special session in Bismarck

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