(cont'd from yesterday's post)
So fracking is what made the "shale revolution" possible. Gas and oil existed all right, in shale rock beneath the ground under Pennsylvania and Texas and other places.
But old-school fracking (invented in the 1940's) was inadequate to get it out--until innovative mining engineers came up with new methods to solve the problems. It's hard to believe this really works - but it does work:
"[P]roducers can now drill a vertical hole two miles deep (way below the potable water table), make a 90-degree turn, and proceed to drill out from there another two miles horizontally, all while geosteering the drill bit to ensure it keeps turning in a tight band of no more than a couple feet thick. Oilmen say it’s like throwing a fastball two miles away and hitting a target the size of a refrigerator."
"Chalk it up to oil industry tenacity, a wildcatter spirit of trying new technologies on multimillion-dollar wells, and a willingness to risk huge sums of money . ."
(cont'd tomorrow)
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