Shale Gas - History

History

Shale gas was first extracted as a resource in Fredonia, NY in 1821, in shallow, low-pressure fractures. Horizontal drilling began in the 1930s, and in 1947 a well was first fracked in the U.S. Work on industrial-scale shale gas production did not begin until the 1970s, when declining production potential from conventional gas deposits in the United States spurred the federal government to invest in R&D and demonstration projects that ultimately led to directional and horizontal drilling, microseismic imaging, and massive hydraulic fracturing. Up until the public and private R&D and demonstration projects of the 1970s and 1980s, drilling in shale was not considered to be commercially viable.

Faced with declining natural gas reserves, the federal government made investments in many supply alternatives, including shale gas with the Eastern Gas Shales Project in 1976 and the annual FERC-approved research budget of the Gas Research Institute, where the federal government began extensive research funding in 1982, disseminating the results to industry. The federal government also provided tax credits and rules benefiting the industry in the 1980 Energy Act. The Department of Energy later partnered with private gas companies to complete the first successful air-drilled multi-fracture horizontal well in shale in 1986. The federal government further incentivized drilling in shale via the Section 29 tax credit for unconventional gas from 1980-2000. Microseismic imaging, a crucial input to both hydraulic fracturing in shale and offshore oil drilling, originated from coalbeds research at Sandia National Laboratories.

George P. Mitchell is regarded as the father of fracking and making it commercially viable by getting costs down to $4 per million British Thermal Units.

Mitchell Energy utilized all these component technologies and techniques to achieve the first economical shale fracture in 1998 using an innovative process called slick-water fracturing. Since then, natural gas from shale has been the fastest growing contributor to total primary energy (TPE) in the United States, and has led many other countries to pursue shale deposits. According to the IEA, shale gas could increase technically recoverable natural gas resources by almost 50%.