Biography
| “ | The rise has been helped along by a variety of factors.... But the biggest difference was down to the efforts of one man: George Mitchell, ...who saw the potential for improving a known technology, fracking, to get at the gas. Big oil and gas companies were interested in shale gas but could not make the breakthrough in fracking to get the gas to flow. Mr Mitchell spent ten years and $6m to crack the problem (surely the best-spent development money in the history of gas). Everyone, he said, told him he was just wasting his time and money. | ” |
|
—The Economist, July 2012 |
Mitchell was born to Greek immigrant parents in the port city of Galveston, Texas. Mitchell earned a degree from Texas A&M University, graduating first in his class in petroleum engineering. He started an independent oil and gas company, Mitchell Energy & Development Corp. and built it into a Fortune 500 company. He participated in the development of about 10,000 wells, including more than 1000 wildcat wells.
In the 1980s and 1990s the company pioneered new technology for horizontal drilling of natural gas. This technique, combined with hydraulic fracturing of rock, makes it possible to economically extract natural gas from shale rock formations. The new approach has been widely adopted by the gas industry and spawned a new gas boom in North America. The Potential Gas Committee estimates that U.S. recoverable reserves will last 118 years at current production levels. Extracting natural gas from shale rock is rapidly spreading to countries outside the United States. Some consider Mitchell's innovation important in the context of energy security, making the United States less dependent on foreign sources of energy. Mitchell Energy & Development Corp. was later acquired by Devon Energy.
Mitchell was the developer of The Woodlands, an unincorporated yet governmentally structured township in Montgomery and Harris counties, Texas, which he developed from timberland located 32 miles north of downtown Houston. He brought on landscape architect Ian McHarg to consult on the project. The master plan for the community called for preserving trees, protecting the environment, minimizing flooding and creating a "pleasant" urban environment. In 2010 The Woodlands was home to 97,000 people. When fully developed the population will have reached 130,000. He and his wife Cynthia have played a major role in the revitalization of his hometown of Galveston. Mitchell had a lifelong passion for tennis, and the tennis center at Texas A&M University, where he was captain of the tennis team, was named in his honor. Built for an estimated $4.2 million, the official ribbon cutting ceremony was held on October 23, 1998. In 1984, he was the recipient of an honorary doctoral degree from the University of Houston.
In 2004 Forbes magazine estimated his net worth as $1.6 billion, placing him among the 500 richest people worldwide.
Read more about this topic: George P. Mitchell
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.”
—Rebecca West [Cicily Isabel Fairfield] (1892–1983)
“Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
“As we approached the log house,... the projecting ends of the logs lapping over each other irregularly several feet at the corners gave it a very rich and picturesque look, far removed from the meanness of weather-boards. It was a very spacious, low building, about eighty feet long, with many large apartments ... a style of architecture not described by Vitruvius, I suspect, though possibly hinted at in the biography of Orpheus.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)