Just finished a great read recommended to me by Michael Palmer — The Frackers largely centers around the events in the American shale oil boom from ~2000 till about ~2014 when the book was written and published. The cast of characters is nothing less than American Heroes- George Mitchell, Harold Hamm, Aubrey McClendon/Tom Ward, Charif Souki. Several of these heroes were bankrupted or even dead and the impact they have had on our way of life is not appreciated by as many as should.

To put it in perspective, the USA (including Alaska) has around 3-4% of the worlds proven oil reserves (around 50,000 million barrels, with a world supply of 1,500,000 million barrels). However, we are the #1 producer in the world, pumping 15% of the worlds supply (13 million barrels each day, where the world pumps 83 million barrels). In 2005 we pumped only about 5 million barrels per day, with many assuming domestic oil would run out, but the work of these people has pushed us from 5 million to 13 million. As a consequence our gas and electricity bills are less than half of western Europe — natural gas in Europe costs $10 per million BTUs, gas in Asia is about $12 per million, in the USA it is just $2-3 per million. Natural gas (produced alongside oil frequently) is also much cleaner burning than coal. If not for these men we we would be burning 2-3x as much coal, polluting the environment, and paying 3x for the ability to do so.

George Mitchell, who developed the Woodlands area north of Houston, started commercial development of horizontal drilling and fracking in the 1980s / 1990s. Oil drilling previous to Mitchell was basically drill a vertical hole in the earth like a big straw and pump it out. Most fields (like Saudi Arabia’s easy oil) are just sitting there in a giant pool. This domestic revolution was shale oil — liquid oil that is there, but trapped inside rock. It takes guts to drill down 2 miles into rock, turn that horizontal, drill another 3 miles, send dynamite explosive charges down with water and blow those rocks up to recover oil. You can see how it is much easier to just drill it in the middle east and pay the importers.

Aubrey McClendon and Tom Ward (via Chesapeake Energy) really supersized the process and embraced debt to expand operations. Aubrey in particular is someone who should be taught in OKC metro public schools as he brought forth Classen Curve, transformed the city with the olympic rowing river south of downtown, helped bring the Thunder to OKC– really changed the fate of OKC for the better. Sadly though, Obama could not have given a flip about any of this and Obama’s DOJ witch hunted him because he lived on the edge with debt and largess, so they indicted him with jail time in mind, and it was too much for Aubrey as his distracted mind was killed in a car crash 24 hours later. This is after Aubrey made many, many land owners very rich by paying billions of dollars for mineral rights. He employed more landmen then others had employees. Shame on our government at that time.

Charis Souki is super fascinating. He actually managed the restaurant in LA where OJ/Nichole Brown/Ron Goldman happened. He decided to leave LA after that and move to Louisiana and get involved in oil. Specifically he saw all the media reports that the USA was running out of oil and decided to build multibillion dollar import terminals for liquified natural gas drilled in Europe and then imported into America. At that time both the USA and rest of the world were about $2-3 per million BTU, and he foresaw a time where the rest of the world would stay at $3 and the USA would go to $10. Well, as it turned out because of this domestic shale oil boom and Russia/Ukraine the USA is at $2-3 and Europe is at $10. He reconfigured his company midstream to go from importing natural gas to exporting it, and now LNG trades at $230 per share, up 20x since 2010).

Anyways, a great read and the author is on X at @GZuckerman I love a good nonfiction story, and all Oklahomans should know this story.