Since joining the Alaskan oil rush in the early 1980s, Richard Repper has jumped from project to project in the state, with no job more than a three-hour flight from this town about 70 miles south of Anchorage. But last fall, he began working in North Dakota, more than 2,000 miles away. A construction manager for an oil-field-services company, the 60-year-old Mr. Repper is finding more opportunity in the Bakken Shale oil fields than on Alaska’s North Slope. He returned to his farmhouse here for just two weeks between Halloween and Easter. “The job keeps getting longer and longer,” says his wife Irene. “I didn’t know he would be working so much.” The energy boom sweeping North America is producing […]