At the midpoint of The Boom, Russell Gold writes this truism: “Americans like our abundant energy, but not the men who provide it.”
That summarizes Gold’s book. The petroleum resources provided by hydraulic fracturing are of enormous benefit to the American economy. The men most responsible for its deployment, however, have proved too ready to risk public air, water and land resources in their race for profit.
George Mitchell, the Houston oilman whose company opened the immense reserves of the Barnett Shale with hydraulic fracturing, was concerned with the sustainability of the Earth’s resources. But Gold finds him in denial about the integrity of Mitchell’s wells in Wise County, where natural gas and the waters of the Trinity aquifer came into contact.
Aubrey McClendon, co-founder of Chesapeake Energy, pushed fracking across the nation in his quest for natural gas. But McClendon’s affinity for Enron-like accountancy and self-dealing, his pell-mell drilling and his multimillion-dollar campaigns to sway the Sierra Club and public opinion left behind a nationwide pall of suspicion.
The Boom, written by The Wall Street Journal’s senior energy correspondent, is a good first look at the fracking bonanza. The technology and its history are well-described. The personalities are presented with empathy but held to account for both the good and bad. What Gold misses, however, is how the natural gas boom described in this book has faded under several years of weak prices. Fracking has now become the technology of an amazing, world-changing resurgence in U.S. oil production.
The gas boom story is nonetheless a good one, and Gold tells it well.
He traces fracking to Edward A.L. Roberts, a tinkerer and Civil War vet. Roberts noticed during the Confederate bombardments at the battle of Fredericksburg that shells landing in a canal transferred the force of their underwater explosions sideways. Oilmen knew the resource they were after was locked under pressure in deep rock formations. If those rocks could be broken up, more of the resource could be released. Roberts invented the first successful torpedoes that detonated underwater at the bottom of wells to fracture rocks.
After World War II, both U.S. and Soviet engineers used nuclear bombs to fracture oilfield rocks. Radiation and poor yields shelved the nuclear approach.
Petroleum engineers, meanwhile, learned that forcing fluids down a well under high pressure could also fracture rocks. Gels, acid, benzene and other materials were used. In 1998, a Mitchell Energy engineer named Nick Steinsberger pumped more than a million gallons of water down a well near Ponder and delivered a monster amount of natural gas.
Like Steinsberger’s water frack, much of this story is set in North Texas. There are stories about Mitchell battling landowners in Wise County, losing a $204 million lawsuit, winning on appeal and cowing the Texas Railroad Commission. TXU Energy stakes its future on 11 coal-fired power plants, then backs down in the face of high railroad fees and a McClendon-financed fight against dirty coal.
Southlake residents fight to keep the drillers away, while Bartonville welcomes them with a tough shield of regulation.
Gold concludes by saying he does not fear fracking but does fear carbon. Global warming is very much part of the story of this technology for extracting natural gas, both for supporters and opponents. Will gas be a lower-carbon bridge fuel leading away from coal, or is there no time left for such bridges? The arguments rage on.
Jim Landers is a Washington correspondent for The Dallas Morning News.
How Fracking Ignited the American Energy Revolution and Changed the World
(Simon & Schuster, $26)
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Russell Gold will speak at noon Thursday at the Rosewood Crescent Hotel, 400 Crescent Court, Dallas. $45 for members of the World Affairs Council of Dallas/Fort Worth; $60 for nonmembers, at dfwworld.org.
Gold is also scheduled to be interviewed on Think noon Tuesday on KERA-FM (90.1).