George P. Mitchell: the father of tracking

Posted by $ MikeMarotta 7 years, 11 months ago to Business
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THE United States has of late been in a slough of despond. The mood is reflected in a spate of books with gloomy titles such as “That Used to Be Us” (Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum) and “Time to Start Thinking: America in the Age of Descent” (Edward Luce). For the first time in decades the majority of Americans think their children will be worse off than they are. Yankee can-do optimism is in danger of congealing into European nothing-can-be-done negativism.

There are good reasons for this. The political system really is “even worse than it looks”, as another doom-laden book puts it. Middle-class living standards have stagnated. The Iraq war turned into a debacle. But the pessimists are ignoring a mighty force pushing in the opposite direction: America’s extraordinary capacity to reinvent itself. No other country produces as many world-changing new companies in such a variety of industries: not just in the new economy of computers and the internet but also in the old economy of shopping, manufacturing and energy.

George Mitchell, who died on July 26th [2013], was a one-man refutation of the declinist hypothesis. From the 1970s America’s energy industry reconciled itself to apparently inevitable decline. Analysts produced charts to show that its oil and gas were running out. The big oil firms globalised in order to survive. But Mr Mitchell was convinced that immense reserves trapped in shale rock deep beneath the surface could be freed. He spent decades perfecting techniques for unlocking them: injecting high-pressure fluids into the ground to fracture the rock and create pathways for the trapped oil and gas (fracking) and drilling down and then sideways to increase each well’s yield (horizontal drilling).

The result was a revolution.
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Read the entire article here:
http://www.economist.com/news/busines...


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  • Posted by freedomforall 7 years, 11 months ago
    That's fracking.
    George was quite a guy. A real wild catter.
    He was a real life model of Ellis Wyatt.
    He didn't develop it all himself but he hired the best people he could find and encouraged them to push the envelope.
    While developing the fracking process in the 70s and 80s he also bought about 80 square miles of forest land north of Houston and created his own Gulch, a new town called The Woodlands.
    (He single handedly drove up land prices. When people saw George's initials on documents they thought General Motors was buying property.)
    Observing George in a business meeting was sometimes like a scene from Atlas Shrugged.

    The Economist article is a very biased view of Mitchell that emphasizes a small part of his character. Its almost an apology for what George accomplished.

    George had most of the positive qualities that people attribute to Donald Trump ... unlike Trump.
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  • Posted by jimjamesjames 7 years, 11 months ago
    Just and FYI: I was an owner/operator, hauling tankers in the Pinedale Anticline gas fields of Wyoming for four years (Made a ton of money) and am very familiar with the fracking process. The issue of ground water contamination is absurd. All wells drilled during my time in the field started with water-based drilling mud for the first 4-7000 feet of the well which means, even if ground water was drilled through, the main "contaminant" was water. It then went to conventional drilling fluid (I was told it was a mix of diesel fuel and bentonite -- a clay --) to completion depth which was always around 13,000 feet deep. Once that drilling fluid was used up, it was sucked out, we hauled it off to the mud plant (it is actually "rented" from the mud plant company) for cleaning and recycling. For fracking, the fluid is pretty much a salt-flavored (I know this from valves leaking and hoses breaking) salt water. Yes, it has secret chemicals in it, but for the most part, salt water. My point, however, is that for the ground water issue, wate-based mud does not contaminate it and the fracking fluids are used at near three miles deep and pose zero problems with water.
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  • Posted by Herb7734 7 years, 11 months ago
    It is interesting to note how vehemently the progressives fight against fracking. It challenges every precept of socialism through invention and wealth creation. It takes a hitherto useless item, oil shale, and turns it into a viable commodity. It was that kind of enterprise that created America, not any of the negative things currently taught in our schools.
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  • Posted by Luis_Tovar 7 years, 11 months ago
    Grew up in Galveston and around the same time GM was starting Woodlands he also single handedly redeveloped and revamped The Strand and several high end hotels on the Seawall Blvd side of the island...The Tremont House and waterfront in Galveston Bay were all under Mitchell Properties Inc and George also brought Mardi Gras back to Galveston since early 80's...new mavericks have taken over some of GM's properties but with Vegas money...different soul altogether...but Mitchell Energy mineral rights checks are in the mail every month and always on time...my first time reading AS was in 1981 and only until now do I see the real Ellis Wyatt with the torch still burning ever after GM has left us...
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  • Posted by $ 7 years, 11 months ago
    Mitchell also funded the Club of Rome:
    http://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/20...
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    • Posted by Lucky 7 years, 11 months ago
      Sustainability-
      one of those expressions that do not mean what the words mean but (like Alice) means what the speaker intends.
      Compare- Friends of Global Progress, Progressivism.

      Ask this question of anyone who believes in Sustainability-
      The number of voters taking (I've seen 47% for the US)
      is outpacing the number of voters contributing.
      Is this sustainable?
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    • Posted by $ Olduglycarl 7 years, 11 months ago
      I'm sure, initially, CoR discussions and concerns were reasoned...only to be taken over by the mindless left and like everything else made into a chicken little fantasy for control and profit.
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    • Posted by freedomforall 7 years, 11 months ago
      In some ways that is a different man than I knew 30 years ago. As people age their goals change. Bottom line is, George is not here to refute or agree. I wonder what his response would have been ... perhaps, "I don't think of you."
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      • Posted by $ 7 years, 11 months ago
        I only read the biography. I never met George P. Mitchell in person. From the book, he was very much his own man. His success in oil and gas, his work in tracking and shale, certainly speak for themselves and speak well for him. And, as you say, he is not here now to explain himself, though, I agree, he probably would not have felt the need.
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