(cont'd from yesterday's post)
It was 1995, central Texas, and a young petroleum engineer got the news that he would probably lose his job.
His company was struggling to make enough money to stay in business. The market price of fuel was high but the company's costs were also high, and they thought they would have to close.
Engineer Nick Steinsberger was desperate to find a way to cut costs. So he experimented with a substance which accounted for nearly half the cost of this well: the white gel they used for blasting. He literally watered it down. Surprisingly, the technique never got less effective.
"And then Nick had this radical idea. Cut out the gel entirely and just pump water into the rock plus a little bleach to kill the bacteria and a little soap to help the water flow down the pipes. . .
"The well fracked with water was almost twice as productive as the gel-fracked well - twice as productive and half as expensive. The technique was tried on oil wells. And the same thing happened. [The fracking BOOM started.] Twenty years later, the U.S. is the biggest oil and natural gas producer on the planet."
This minor-seeming innovation created wealth that supports millions of Americans today.
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