Program that brought Ukrainians to North Dakota oil fields ends

abcnews.go.com:

An oil and gas trade group in North Dakota has ended a workforce recruitment program that brought Ukrainians from their war-torn country to North Dakota's oil fields to fill jobs

BISMARCK, N.D. — An oil and gas trade group has ended a recruitment program that brought Ukrainians from their war-torn country to North Dakota's oil field to fill jobs.

The North Dakota Petroleum Council shelved the Bakken Global Recruitment of Oilfield Workers program after placing about 60 Ukrainians with 16 employers from July to November 2023, the group's president, Ron Ness, said. The goal had been to recruit 100 workers by the end of last year and 400 within the first 12 months of the program, not all of them from Ukraine.

“We just weren’t seeing the great demand from our members on us to help them with workforce,” Ness said. Job placement also isn’t a “core function” of the trade group, he said.

Workers who have already been placed can apply to stay in the U.S. for two more years under a recently announced “re-parole” process, Ness said. Applications will be considered on “a discretionary, case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit,” according to a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services email announcement.

The North Dakota Petroleum Council presented the program as a workforce and humanitarian solution amid a labor shortage in North Dakota and the war in Ukraine. Bakken GROW worked with the Uniting for Ukraine humanitarian program.

Ness called it a success but also a “tremendous investment on our part in terms of time and staff and all those things.”

“The model is out there and, I think, works very well,” he said. “I think we were very happy with the matching that we did between Ukrainians who