How Innovative Fracturing Chemicals Helped End the Era of Energy Crises
(PRWEB) December 16, 2013 -- They used to happen all the time, the energy crises, regular as the tides. From major ones in 1973 and 1979, to the more minor ones in the years between and after, they were a ubiquitous part of American life. Things would get better for a while, but eventually, people knew they would have to start worrying about the oil supply. Until, recently, that is.
There's been a change: the crises are no more.
What caused this shift, and why didn't it happen sooner? The government tried a wide range of regulatory initiatives -- from tighter regulations on the market to price controls on the product -- in an effort to find a solution. While some of them made a difference in the short-run, none proved to be a fix that would end the issue once and for all.
What did, however, was private-sector innovation.
Not everybody knows who George Mitchell is, but more people should. Mitchell was born in Galveston, Texas to Greek immigrants, and died last year at the seasoned age of 94. In that time, he revolutionized the oil industry with a series of technological advancements that would change the way the country addressed its energy needs.
When he first started hydraulic fracturing in shales, he received derisive jeers. Success didn't come easy, and it didn't come cheap. He spent a lot of his time and money in Central Texas's Barnett Shale, trying to devise a way to get at the oil contained therein. Finally, one day, he was able to break through. What happened next was spectacular.
The rise in drilling and production has been meteoric. After a long lull, Texas has burst onto the global oil scene once more, and will soon occupy the same rarified air as industry heavyweights Venezuela and Kuwait. This boom has yielded benefits for other states as well. In part due to oil exports, the country's trade deficit dropped in October. Regions that were once struggling have been revitalized by the revenue and job creation sparked by the most recent oil boom, leading to education and community opportunities.
There have been other benefits to the creative new techniques. Advancements in drilling mud additives mean that not only are wells more efficient, they're also better for the environment and the surrounding areas. By using equipment that runs horizontally rather than vertically, crews can cover much more ground while causing less impact to both the land and the residents in the areas where they're working.
All of this progress has been a great boon to the country. America's oil output is up by more than half in the past five years, and its imports have dropped sharply, from 60 percent in 2005 to 35 percent today. For comparison, that's about what it was in 1973, just before the energy crisis became a fait accompli.
The oil boom hasn't just helped to heat homes and make cars go. It's also added jobs and money into the economy. What's more, it's given the United States security in global markets and made the perennial energy crises -- a problem which once seemed intractable -- a thing of the past.
Rapid Drilling and Chem Rock are proud to carry on the tradition of providing innovative solutions to the country's energy demands.
Ben Davis, EnerSciences, http://www.enersciences.com, 512-505-4101, [email protected]
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