by Russell Gold
Details on the preliminary production of the Irene Kovaloff provided by Marathon Oil.
Hamilton, James D. “Oil and the Macroeconomy Since World War II.” Journal of Political Economy 91, no. 2 (April 1983): 228–48.
———. “Causes and Consequences of the Oil Shock of 2007–08.” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity (Spring 2009): 215–59.
Nordeng, Stephan. “A Brief History of Oil Production from the Bakken Formation in the Williston Basin.” Geo News (January 2010): 5.
Rankin, R., M. Thibodeau, M. C. Vincent, and T. T. Palisch. “Improved Production and Profitability Achieved with Superior Completions in Horizontal Wells: A Bakken/Three Forks Case History.” Paper presented at SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition, September 19–22, 2010, Florence, Italy.
Sorensen, James A. Evaluation of Key Factors Affecting Successful Oil Production in the Bakken Formation, North Dakota. Assessment presented to National Energy Technology Laboratory, Morgantown, WV, 2008.
Chapter 4: Dominion over the Rocks
I relied on many sources for this chapter, the most important of which are listed here. I found information about Edward Roberts in an 1864 edition of Dental Times: A Quarterly Journal of Dental Science; see the patent notice on page 180, as well as “Improved Vulcanizing-Machine,” Letters Patent 37,523 (January 27, 1863), and “Improvement in Apparatus for Vulcanizing Rubber, &c,” Letters Patent 23,948 (dated May 10, 1859.) The torpedo patent is 59,936 (November 20, 1866). His hiring of Pinkerton detectives is from the American Oil & Gas Historical Society’s online article “Shooters—A ‘Fracking’ History” and is available at http://aoghs.org/technology/shooters-well-fracking-history. (Last accessed August 2013.) The description of the “groan like a great monster” is from the February 4, 1865, edition of the Boston Commercial Bulletin. Paul Adomites shared with me a prepublication version of his article “The First Frackers—Shooting Oil Wells with Nitroglycerin Torpedoes,” which later appears in Oil-Industry History 12, no. 1 (December 2011).
Details about acidization and other twentieth-century techniques come from a number of sources, including a November 1938 Popular Mechanics article, “New Oil Wells from Old Ones,” and, in the magazine’s December 1942 issue, “Bringing Old Oil Wells Back to Life.” The steel shortage and post–World War II oil demand and shortages are described in the February 9, 1948, issue of Life in “The U.S. Runs Short of Oil.” The cost of Stanolind’s research center was reported in the February 1953 issue of Resourceful Oklahoma, a publication of the Oklahoma Planning and Resources Board. The description of Stanolind’s facility is in “Labs Bring City Annual Payroll of $11 Million,” in the Tulsa World, March 8, 1961.
The Stanolind researchers published a number of scientific papers and patents. Bob Fast’s and George Howard’s 1970 book on hydraulic fracturing was also extremely helpful. Rebecca Radford at the Kansas Geological Society & Library in Wichita helped me find the scouting tickets for the Klepper #1 well, and historian Larry Skelton helped me decipher them. Details of the Klepper well can be found on pages 8 and 9 in Howard’s and Fast’s book. Bob Fast’s son Rob helped me with the family history. The Stanolind researchers filed two patents nearly simultaneously that established the basics of midcentury fracking. Floyd Farris is listed as the inventor on Patent 29,922 (later reissued as Patent 23,733). The same day, J. B. Clark filed a nearly identical patent. Both patents were filed on behalf of Stanolind. As best I can determine, the two patents vary in one small detail having to do with the orientation of fractures, and Stanolind likely filed both to protect itself. Key papers include: Floyd Farris’s “Method for Determining Minimum Waiting-on-Cement Time,” in Petroleum Technology (January 1946); George Howard’s and Bob Fast’s “Squeeze Cementing Operations” in Petroleum Transactions, AIME (vol. 189, 1950); J. B. Clark’s “A Hydraulic Process for Increasing the Productivity of Wells” in Journal of Petroleum Technology (vol. 1, 1949); and Bob Fast’s “A Study of the Permanence of Production Increases Due to Hydraulic Fracture Treatment” in Petroleum Transactions, AIME (vol. 195, 1952). Another important early paper is M. King Hubbert’s and David G. Willis’s “Mechanics of Hydraulic Fracturing” in Petroleum Transactions, AIME (vol. 210, 1957). Hubbert famously spelled out his peak theory in “Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuel” in Drilling and Production Practice (1956). The Hubbert quote is from a 1989 oral history found here: http://www.oilcrisis.com/hubbert/aip/aip_vi.htm. (Last accessed August 2013.)
Details of the fatal explosion in Tulsa were difficult to find. Sheri Perkins at the Tulsa City-County Library did yeoman’s work digging up the November 12, 1970, edition of the Tulsa World, where the article “8 Die in Blast Near Tulsa” by George Wesley and Pat Crow lay out the details.
President Nixon’s “Special Message to the Congress on Energy Resources” was delivered on June 4, 1971, and can be found online through the University of California, Santa Barbara, at this web address: www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=3038#axzz1l0Kk8Ot8. (Last accessed August 2013.) His quote “My doctor tells me” is from his “Address to the Nation About Policies to Deal with the Energy Shortages” and was delivered on November 7, 1973. It can be found at http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=4034. (Last accessed August 2013.)
The “something we can use any day of the week in any gas field” quote is from “Project Gasbuggy” in the September 1967 issue of Popular Mechanics. Details about Project Rio Blanco and the plaque are from the Department of Energy’s “Rio Blanco, Colorado, Site Fact Sheet” issued in October 2011 and available at www.lm.doe.gov/WorkArea/linkit.aspx?LinkIdentifier=id&ItemID=1006. (Last accessed August 2013.) The “Gas from Project Rio Blanco Unit Could Equal 10 Year Supply” quote is from Frank Kreith and Catherine B. Wrenn’s book, cited below.
“When everything else fails, frac it” was quoted in Ahmed S. Abou-Sayed’s preface to the third edition of Reservoir Stimulation, cited below.
Details of the work done by Al Yost and others at the Morgantown Energy Technology Center is available on two CDs. In 2007 the center published DOE’s Unconventional Gas Research Programs 1976–1995: An Archive of Important Results, which is a good place to start for those interested in learning more. A couple of the more important papers are listed below.
Economides, Michael J., and Kenneth G. Nolte. Reservoir Stimulation. 3th ed. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, 2000.
Frehner, Brian. Finding Oil: The Nature of Petroleum Geology, 1859–1920. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011.
Giddens, Paul H. The Birth of the Oil Industry. New York: Macmillan Co., 1938.
———. Early Days of Oil: A Pictorial History of the Beginnings of the Industry in Pennsylvania. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1948.
History of Petroleum Engineering. New York: American Petroleum Institute, 1961.
Howard, George C., and C. Robert Fast. Hydraulic Fracturing. New York: Society of Petroleum Engineers of AIME, 1970.
Kreith, Frank, and Catherine B. Wrenn. The Nuclear Impact: A Case Study of the Plowshare Program to Produce Gas by Underground Nuclear Stimulation in the Rocky Mountains. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1976.
Lederer, Adam. “Using Public Policy Models to Evaluate Nuclear Stimulation Projects: Wagon Wheel in Wyoming.” Master’s diss., University of Wyoming, 1998.
McLaurin, John J. Sketches in Crude-Oil: Some Accidents and Incidents of the Petroleum Development in All Parts of the Globe. Harrisburg, PA: self-published, 1896.
Moniz, Ernest, Henry D. Jacoby, Anthony J. M. Meggs, et al. The Future of Natural Gas: An Interdisciplinary MIT Study. Cambridge, MA: MIT Energy Initiative, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2011.
Morra, Frank, J. P. Brashear, and Mark R. Haas. “Comparative Economics of Gas Production from Conventional, Tight, and Deep Reservoirs.” Paper presented at SPE Unconventional Gas Recovery Symposium, Pittsburgh, May 16–18, 1982.
Tarbell, Ida M. The History of the Standard Oil Company (Briefer Version). Edited by David M. Chalmers. New York: Ha
rper & Row, 1966.
Yergin, Daniel. The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power. New York: Free Press, 1991.
———. The Quest: Energy, Security and the Remaking of the Modern World. New York: Penguin Press, 2011.
Yost II, A. B., W. K. Overbey Jr., and R. S. Carden. “Drilling a 2,000-ft Horizontal Well in the Devonian Shale.” Paper presented at SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition, Dallas, September 27–30, 1987.
Yost II, A. B., and W. K. Overbey Jr. “Production and Stimulation Analysis of Multiple Hydraulic Fracturing of a 2,000-ft. Horizontal Well.” Paper presented at SPE Gas Technology Symposium, Dallas, June 7–9, 1989.
Chapter 5: Wise County
I am greatly indebted to Todd Mitchell for helping me interview his father, George Mitchell. He coordinated the meeting and accompanied me to help keep his father focused, but he also allowed me to persistently pepper him with questions. Todd Mitchell provided me information about the family’s financial straits and health problems in the mid to late 1990s. John C. Todd, son of Cambe Blueprint owner John Todd, was also helpful in recalling details of the office and his father’s relationship with George Mitchell. I interviewed several others who worked for Mitchell Energy, including Steve McKetta and Dan Steward, both of whose recollections were helpful. University of Texas professor Jurgen Schmandt shared several interviews he conducted with George Mitchell. This is the source of the “Smart lawyers would convince a jury of anything” quote. I also reviewed many years of public statements and SEC filings from Mitchell Energy. The Texas Independent Producers and Royalty Owners Association (TIPRO) oral history archive, and specifically the Mitchell interview, at the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas, was a rich source of detail.
Tonia Wood of the Texas State Library and Archives Commission helped me find numerous articles and correspondence from the 1990s. The material is located in the central correspondence files of the Records of Texas Governor George W. Bush, Archives and Information Services Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission. This is the source of Carrie Baran’s “I am also pro business” letter. Another important document is a July 20, 1998, memo from Mike Regan, the Texas Railroad Commission’s executive director, to Governor Bush’s executive assistant, Joe Allbaugh. Dennis Meadows shared with me what he remembered about his work with George Mitchell. I also relied on the Time article “Environment: The Worst Is Yet to Be?” from the January 24, 1972, edition.
Details on the birth of petroleum engineering are from the 1961 History of Petroleum Engineering cited above. The surprising detail that two of the first three people to receive this degree were Chinese came from this book. They are Chun Young Chan and Barrin Ye Long. The third graduate was Frederick Arthur Johnson. The quote “It appears that this technique is probably not economically feasible” is from a 1977 report issued by the Energy Research and Development Administration’s Bartlesville Energy Research Center titled An Application of MHF Technology to a Tight Gas Sand in the Fort Worth Basin.
Another source of information was the Texas Railroad Commission’s records. Details of the 1982 C. W. Slay #1 well are in Oil and Gas Dockets nos. 5, 7B and 9–80, 413. The 1977 and 1978 investigation into Wise County water and Mitchell drilling practices can be found in Railroad Commission Oil and Gas Docket no. 9-68644, located in the records room of the Commission in Austin. This is where I found Darwin K. White’s letter. He filled in the rest of the story in an interview. The “probable source” finding comes from the December 16, 1977, commission report titled “Results of Investigation into Gas Contamination of Lower Trinity Aquifer.” I found the state’s subsequent investigative material in the commission’s files under Oil and Gas Docket no. 09-0218133. This lengthy file contains the history of this regulatory action. Details of Mitchell Energy’s letter proposing lowering the state fine and response are dated November 23, 1998, and the settlement agreement is dated December 21, 1998. Information about the D. J. Hughes well can be found at the Texas Railroad Commission production records for API well no. 49780215.
The lawsuit against Mitchell Energy is well documented, if largely forgotten. There were the court files and the Texas Court of Appeals appellate decision, case no. 2-96-227-CV (November 13, 1997). Bill Keffer and Randy Miller both shared their recollections and files with me. Miller’s quote that Mitchell saw Wise County as “a cash register” came from a February 2012 interview with the author. I also relied on a number of contemporary newspaper and magazine articles, including “Flaming Justice” by Janin Friend in the January 1997 issue of Texas Business, which is the source of the “burned-up, parched, miserable place” quote. The Dallas Morning News, Houston Chronicle, and Associated Press covered this case closely.
Also thanks to Robert Mace and Charles Kreitler, a former Mitchell Energy hydrogeologist, for talking Texas water and methane pollution with me.
Childs, William R. The Texas Railroad Commission: Understanding Regulation in America to the Mid-Twentieth Century. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2005.
Kutchin, Joseph W. How Mitchell Energy & Development Corp. Got Its Start and How It Grew: An Oral History and Narrative Overview. Universal Publishers, 2001.
Meadows, Dennis L., ed. Alternatives to Growth-I: A Search for Sustainable Futures: Papers Adapted from Entries to the 1975 George and Cynthia Mitchell Prize and from Presentations Before the 1975 Alternatives to Growth Conference, Held at the Woodlands, Texas. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger Pub. Co., 1977.
Meadows, Donella H., Dennis Meadows, and Jorgen Randers. Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update. 3rd ed. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 2004.
Schmandt, Jurgen. George P. Mitchell and the Idea of Sustainability. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2010.
Steward, Dan B. The Barnett Shale Play: Phoenix of the Fort Worth Basin—A History. Fort Worth, TX: Fort Worth Geological Society, 2007.
Chapter 6: Ice Doesn’t Freeze Anymore
This chapter is based mostly on recollections of people involved and well records. Nick Steinsberger graciously spent hours emailing back and forth with me as we, through a process of elimination and detective work, figured out which was the world’s first successfully fracked well. Then he spent a day with me to visit the well and share his recollections.
The S. H. Griffin is API well no. 42-121-30670. There are numerous helpful paper and electronic records about the well in Texas Railroad Commission files. Ray Walker and Mark Whitley spoke to me at length, as did others active in Fort Worth in the late 1990s. Ray Walker and Nick Steinsberger (and four others) collaborated on “Proppants, We Still Don’t Need No Proppants—A Perspective of Several Operators,” a 1998 paper presented at SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition in New Orleans. In addition to being humorously titled, the paper was very helpful to understanding the thinking of completion engineers at the time. This is the source of the “Why it works is still generally unknown” quote.
Jean-Philippe Nicot’s Oil & Gas Water Use in Texas: Update to the 2011 Mining Water Use Report was useful to understand fracking water consumption issues. Dr. Nicot works for the Bureau of Economic Geology, and the report was prepared for the Texas Oil & Gas Association.
Chapter 7: Larry Was the Brake
For the history of Devon, I relied on Bob Burke’s book on the life of John Nichols as well as Larry Nichols’s recollections from a 1996 speech preserved by the Newcomen Society for the Study of the History of Engineering and Technology. The Burke book provides an interesting glimpse of how raising money for domestic energy exploration was professionalized and is the source of the quote about John being the accelerator and Larry the brake.
I also pored through numerous SEC filings from both Mitchell Energy and Devon Energy to better understand the companies. The form S-4 (filed by Devon on August 30, 2001) and later amendments to the original provide information about the merger, which was fleshed out by my interviews with participants. Devon’s
description of the Barnett as “unique” can be found in its 10-K filed in March 2003.
At Devon, Jeff Hall was particularly helpful, as were Vince White and Chip Minty, who helped me line up interviews with Larry Nichols, Brad Foster, Tony Vaughn, and Jeff Agosta. I tracked down others, including Chance Jackson and Jay Ewing, on my own. Jay keeps several years of his work calendars and helped me pinpoint the date that I first toured the Barnett. Sarah Fullenwider and Fort Worth’s approach to regulation come through interviews with her and other city officials.
While working for the Wall Street Journal, I obtained (and thankfully filed away) the June 2002 Devon presentation “Mid-Year Operations Update & Barnett Shale School.” My interviews with Dick Lowe, Trevor Rees-Jones, and others were conducted for a story I reported several years ago. Information about Hallwood Group and Bill Marble’s quote about learning to respect, not fear, the Ellenberger formation is from a presentation he made to the Ellison Miles Geotechnology Institute, and details of his speech to the Fort Worth Geological Society are in the group’s January 2004 newsletter. Keith Hutton’s reaction is from a 2005 interview with the author.
I reviewed information about Devon’s Veale Ranch #1H and Graham Shoop #6 wells, API no. 42-439-3041200 and no. 42-121-3168500, through the Texas Railroad Commission website. I also consulted records for the Lakeview #1H, the well that opened Aubrey McClendon’s eyes to the potential of the Barnett Shale. His spoke about this well on a December 1, 2004, conference call and again at an energy conference on June 1, 2009.
Professor Mark Zoback, at Stanford, relayed the story about the informal survey of engineers and provided me with the results of the survey.
The story of former University of Texas bandmates Jack Randall and Rex Tillerson making a deal was reported in Brian O’Keefe’s April 2012 article in Fortune magazine’s “Exxon’s Big Bet on Shale Gas.” Further details, including Tillerson’s quote, come from chapter 27 in Steve Coll’s book on Exxon Mobil, cited below.
