No Billionaires in North Dakota | Video

Evan Kruegel | 10/30/2012

A private research firm has released a report listing the richest person in each U.S state, and despite the huge amounts of money being made in North Dakota, it`s one of just a handful of states without a single billionaire.

Some of the names on the list released by research firm Wealth-X won`t surprise you: the richest person in Washington? Bill Gates. The richest person in Nebraska? Warren Buffet. But the richest person in North Dakota? That would be Gary Tharaldson, a real estate mogul in Fargo.

The report places Tharaldson`s worth at just over $900 million and makes North Dakota one of just nine states without a billionaire. With so much money being made off energy production in the state, you might assume a billionaire would reside here, but there are some reasons why that isn`t yet the case, the main one being that the largest companies in the region are not from the area.

The chairman of Halliburton resides in Dubai, the CEO of Statoil lives in Norway and the CEO of Schlumberger is stationed in Texas. Five energy moguls worth over a billion dollars did crack the top 50, but they`re all stationed in other states. The list doesn`t reflect the combined numbers of billionaires in each state, so although New York only has one person on the list, the state actually contains 71 billionaires.

Alaska, Delaware and North Dakota have zero billionaires and the fewest millionaires on a per capita basis.

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