WATFORD CITY, ND—Geologists tout the arid Bakken region in western North Dakota as the world's next Saudi Arabia, and thousands of oil workers have begun pouring into its small towns. And although many natural resource booms attract only transient housing, Ken Hartog, one of many real estate entrepreneurs that have relocated to the area, says these towns need permanent built-out communities with new multifamily housing, retail, storage, office space, medical buildings and every other type of real estate.

“We're beyond the speculative stage,” he says, “and it's just getting started.” The United States Geological Survey estimated on April 30 that the region had 7.4 billion barrels of oil recoverable through hydraulic fracturing of the underground shale formations, a 27-year supply at the current rate of production, and about double what the agency estimated in 2008. Four thousand wells have already been drilled and as the hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” technology improves, the amount of recoverable oil will increase even more.

“It's like the Middle East, say in 1975,” Hartog adds. “People were worried that would go back to what it had been five years previously, but look at it now. This is the same thing.” Two years ago, after a real estate career primarily in Los Angeles, Hartog started Bakken Real Estate Partners in Williston, the largest town in the western basin. The firm just closed on the purchase of the Lincoln RV Park in Watford City, a small town just south of Williston. Hartog plans to include as many as 150 RV spots on the 26-acre site and “develop it out with retail at the front, a convenience store, restaurant and a strip mall with whatever the community needs. My plan is to make permanent structures that will be there forever.”