Oil prices fell in April as the coronavirus merged into the world’s energy markets – and Wyoming’s economy went along with it.
Anyone who knows the economy of the least populous state will tell you that Wyoming is an energy hub that produces 0% of the country’s coal and 1 times more energy than it consumes. In 2018, its energy energy production was third in Texas and Pennsylvania. But by the second quarter of 2020, the state had lost 5 energy jobs due to price declines.
In Douglas, Wyoming, a small town of about 6,000 and Converse County seat, most of the revenue comes from sales taxes related to the energy industry, said City Administrator Jonathan Techarth. So far, they have earned a third of what they earned by the same period last year.
“We’ve cut our budget by 25 percent since last year, and that was probably very optimistic,” he said.
When the oil is tanked the companies close the wells and lay off the workers. Tishert said school enrollment is down this year as unemployed residents evacuated their families and moved on. Many residents have been left without many employment options and now it has become difficult to see an eight-month increase in the epidemic due to the Covid-19 case alone.
For the most part in Wyoming, the energy industry has “already found cheap and easy oil and gas resources,” said Kyle Tisdale, a lawyer at the Center for Western Environmental Law, which studies the state’s boom and bust economy. So corporations turned to more expensive methods like horizontal fracking.
“You’re talking about a break-even point of 50 50, $ 60 a barrel, and oil floating around આસપાસ 40 to $ 45,” he said. “All indications are that we will not be higher than that for the foreseeable future.”
Companies exit without profit. “Communities shoulder the burden and are the first to feel the impact,” Tisdale said.
But if you don’t live in the state, Wyoming just feels like an open border, where celebrities like Kanye West escape and relax, or possibly lease their land rights to rac fracking companies.
While California was besieged by wildfires, YouTube and makeup mogul Jeffrey Starr visited her home in Wyoming.
“It’s a strange atmosphere here in California,” the star said on her Instagram story. “It means it’s time to go to Wyoming, so I’ll hop on a jet right now and leave in a few days.”
Tisdale said the situation, where moment-to-moment companies would flee the state with a moment’s notice, while the super-rich would flee to the state, Tisdale said.
This summer, with unemployment rising across the state, Jackson Hole, one of America’s most popular places as a ski resort and one of America’s most economically unequal areas, was as busy as ever. The real estate industry shattered sales records, growing 14 percent and spending more than 1.5 1.5 billion on real estate in the first nine months of 2020 alone.
Justin Farrell, a professor of sociology at Yale University and author of the book “Billionaire Wilderness,” said that while corporations may be leaving, Wyming is coming to the rich part because of the space it holds in the public imagination.
For the wealthy, Wyoming escapes both epidemics and other problems, where open skies and empty pastures can help you clear your mind. As the states locked, Wyoming remained open. Explaining why Wyoming did not give a stay-at-home, she told Fox & Friends in April that “we have been socially isolated for the entire 13030 years in the state. Home order.
Wealthy people showed up by then, and the way they experience epidemics seems very different than most people in the state. Covid-19, in Wyoming and elsewhere across the country, has exposed these disparities.
If you live on a millionaire dollar livestock in Jackson Hall, you have access to private doctors. You probably even brought your own ventilator with you when you fled the state, Farrell said. But elsewhere in the state, where only as many people live per square mile, residents remain vulnerable to the labor market and there is a widespread lack of health care. The population is older than average and has more health hazards, and many stay away from clinics.
Luxury retreats like Jackson Hole’s happen in more money spent in the community, sure, but select people who migrate to Wyoming, who have no income tax, often do so to seek refuge from taxes. Farrell believes the state’s politicians “prefer excessive health over their neighbors” and that Wyoming needs to do more to hold large corporations in Wyoming accountable for its resources, “use it and give it up” and abandon workers who make them rich. .
Now, the spread of the virus in Wyoming is out of control, as it is in most parts of the West. The state saw a 475 per cent increase in cases at the end of October and since then, its spread has continued. More than 21,300 cases of coronavirus have been reported in the state since the onset of the epidemic, of which more than 15,000 have occurred since October.
“The crisis is here, and it’s going to get worse,” Farrell said.
In severely affected New York City, 1 in 32 residents contracted Covid-19. In Albany County, Wyoming, Larami’s hometown, he’s 1 in 18. The state does not have a mask order, but Albany County put it in place last week, a state representative who tested positive for coronavirus died a few days later, and the governor announced that White House Coronavirus Task Force Coordinator Dr. Deborah Berksy They will have to separate after being exposed to the virus during the meeting.
In Converse County, Wyoming, Public Health Nurse Manager Darcy Cowardin and her team are working to flatten out the extra curve of their own case. More than 13,500 people reported 396 cases in Border County, and 118 active cases as of Friday. For such a small community it is an astronomical number.
“Our hospital is being hit very hard,” Cowardy said. The contact is impressed, the virus is entering schools and implementing masking is a nightmare. Much of the spread is coming from family gatherings, bars and local events.
“The bottom fell down,” Cuardine said of the collapse of the Raja area. “Add an epidemic, and hit our community and the county very hard.”
Part of the problem is that for a long time, the virus did not become very strong in Converse. Wyoming was filing several dozen cases across the state on bad days in August and September. The crisis that was emerging across the country did not seem to be happening, as many residents felt. And when that happened, small hospitals had no way to get ready, and not everyone sat down to stop the spread.
“We’re in a community where no one wants to be told what to do.” “There’s just these pockets of people who don’t want to admit that this is one thing.”
Cowardine said the first improvement group in the public health department’s office fees came to Douglas recently, when they were harassed and videotaped after being asked to wear a mask. Many people screaming horribly at employees have been flooded with phone lines from people outside the state.
“It’s very difficult to live in public health right now,” he said.
He also said that it is difficult to meet the needs. The demand for food banks and local aid sources is higher than ever. Contact tracing has become so reprehensible with such cases that the county is no longer able to reach people who need to be quarantined and ask people with coronavirus to find their own contact if they can. The people of the county have escaped long-term hardships from illness, and deaths are on the rise.
Not far from Cowardin’s office fees in Douglas, Drag Queen is the huge backyard of superstar Rupaul Charles, spread over 60,000 acres. “There really is land management,” Raupaul told NPR in early March. It has leased mineral and water rights and grazing rights to freaking companies.
While Raupaul is in and around Converse County, he doesn’t worry too much about what’s going on around him or under him. “I meditate, and I pray,” he said. “And my favorite time is to focus on peace. And stays very quiet on the ranch. “
