`We can do a better job’

E.F. Schumacher

George Mitchell didn’t set out to build a better city or redefine the American suburb. Having made some money in the energy business, he began buying real estate to diversify his interests. But he also became increasingly aware of social challenges, especially the decay of America’s largest cities in the 1960s, and he decided to do something about it.

 

“I made the decision [that] we can do a better job in developing our cities,” he said.

He’d met the inventor and futurist Buckminster Fuller at the Aspen Institute in 1959 and later, the economist E.F. Schumacher. As I write in George P. Mitchell: Fracking, Sustainability, and an Unorthodox Quest to Save the Planet. Schumacher’s views in particular influenced Mitchell’s evolving thinking about sustainability.

Schumacher … advocated earth- and user-friendly technology that corresponded to the scale of communal life. Schumacher’s rational approach to economics and his view that people should matter most in economic theory appealed to George’s own pragmatism.(Schumacher also predicted the rise of OPEC, which may have caught George’s attention as well.) Listening to Schumacher and others in Aspen rounded out his views. He became more convinced than ever that government and business should work together to
develop sustainable societies. At the same time, he worried that politicians and business leaders were too shortsighted.

[…]

Instead of worrying about the next quarter’s financial results, business leaders had the power to shape the world in areas beyond their expertise, such as education, poverty, crime, transportation, and globalization. It was a realization that would redirect the course of his life. He began to see the focus of business as narrow and self-serving. Too many executives worried too much about short-term financial gain rather than long-term solutions. “Corporate America has the resources, but 90 out of 100 of my counterparts could care less,” he said. “Most never even expose themselves to major problems.” The realization would underpin a philosophy that would define his pursuit of both fracking and sustainable development.

Ironically, the Business Roundtable recently redefined its mission statement to reflect some of these same ideas. Mitchell, however, had a 50-year head start.

George P. Mitchell: Fracking, Sustainability, and an Unorthodox Quest to Save the Planet is available for order online and will arrive in bookstores Oct. 11.

 

 

What the frack?

Not an accurate representation of how fracking works.

One of the unexpected controversies I encountered in writing my biography of Houston energy pioneer George Mitchell was the spelling of “fracking.” Many of the oil and gas sources I interviewed for the book insisted that spelling the word with a “k” was offensive. I decided to stick with the common spelling of “fracking,” but I did add a note explaining my choice:

 

Many geologists and petroleum engineers object to the spelling of “fracking.” Because the term is short for “fracturing,” they argue it should be spelled without the “k.” Indeed, early scientific papers written about the technique often refer to the need to “frac” a well, or the process itself as “fracing” or even “fraccing.” Phonetically, though, “fracing” would be pronounced “frace-ing.” As the technique entered the public lexicon, the “k” was added, in keeping with the tenets of English, and that is a practice I have continued
throughout this book.

Unfortunately for the industry, “frack” is also a euphemism for an expletive on the 1970s science fiction show Battlestar Galactica, and when that show was revived in 2004, the term was resurrected. The show’s popularity coincided with the widespread use of fracking. For many environmental groups, the irony was too delicious to ignore, and “fracking” became a derisive term applied to almost any form of drilling for oil or natural gas.

When the myths and hyperbole are stripped away, fracking has benefits as well as drawbacks, but for George Mitchell, it was part of a lifelong effort to make the world a better place.

This is one case where the English majors win. Of course, in George Mitchell’s day, fracking was considered an “unconventional” drilling method. Today, it’s common place. So maybe it’s time for a new term. On a recent podcast with the Houston Chronicle’s Nancy Sarnoff, I suggested “deep-earth rock massage.” Any other ideas?

If you’d like to read more about how fracking came into the mainstream, or how the man who made it work was also a champion of sustainable development, you can pre-order my book George P. Mtichell: Fracking, Sustainability, and an Unorthodox Quest to Save the Planet. It will be available in bookstores everywhere on Oct. 11.

Fracking’s Graceland

It doesn’t look like the starting point for a revolution, but this well, the C.W. Slay #1, is where America’s energy renaissance began. The C.W. Slay #1 was the first well drilled into the Barnett Shale in 1981 by Mitchell Energy and Development. If you’re wondering why Saudi oil installations can come under attack in 2019 and gasoline prices in the U.S. haven’t spiked to more than $4 a gallon, it all comes back to this well.

It would be another 17 years before George Mitchell and his team figured out fracking and unleashed the natural gas reserves in the Barnett. But this is the well that convinced George Mitchell that the gas was there and made him determined to find a way to produce it.

Here’s what I write about the well in my book George P. Mitchell: Fracking, Sustainability, and an Unorthodox Quest to Save the Planet, which is available for pre-order now and will be in bookstores Oct. 11:

The C. W. Slay #1 juts upward through sparse, open prairie, surrounded by a chain-link fence. The wellhead itself is only about six inches in diameter, capped by a steel valve painted a drab gray green and faded from years of scorching North Texas sunshine. Far to the southeast, barely visible on the horizon, are the skyscrapers of
downtown Fort Worth.

Mitchell Energy and Development Corp. drilled the natural gas well in 1981, piercing the Barnett Shale formation about 7,500 feet below the scrubby surface. The company operated hundreds of other wells in the area, but this one was different. This one changed the world, although it would be two decades before anyone—including company namesake George P. Mitchell and his geologists and engineers—
realized it.

Today, to workers in the neighboring gas fields, the C. W. Slay #1 is something akin to Graceland for Elvis fans. The Railroad Commission of Texas, which regulates the state’s oil and gas industry, requires companies to post a sign declaring the name of each well, the amount of acreage in the lease, the identifying number that the commission assigns to it, and an emergency phone contact. As the fracking boom raged across North Texas from 2006 to 2014, thieves who were obviously well versed in industry lore often repeatedly stole the metal marker on the C. W. Slay #1.

To those unfamiliar with the energy business, the well is unremarkable. It’s hard to pick out from among dozens of similar wellheads nearby. But with the C. W. Slay #1, Mitchell Energy, a little-known, midsized natural gas producer, took the unconventional first steps that would shake up global energy markets as dramatically as the Middle Eastern oil embargoes that dominated the 1970s. The C. W. Slay #1 and the subsequent wells drilled into the Barnett formation laid the foundation for the “shale revolution,” proving that natural gas could be extracted from the dense, black rock thousands of feet underground.

Fracking, the process for unlocking those gas reserves in commercial quantities, came later. It would be almost a quarter century, in the late 1990s, before George Mitchell and his team perfected the process that transformed the energy landscape.

 

Another example of how fracking has changed everything

Saudi Arabia will now buy natural gas from the United States. When I was in the Kingdom in 2011, the Saudis were talking about developing more of their own natural gas resources. The problem the country faces remains the same: its domestic oil consumption continues to rise, and the more oil it uses at home, the less it has to sell abroad. So the deal to buy U.S. gas makes sense, but eight years ago, the Saudis would never have believed that one day they’d be buying natural gas from us.