The Frackers: The Outrageous Inside Story of the New Billionaire Wildcatters

This is the biggest story in energy for decades. It is a great benefit to the world in making more and cheaper natural gas and petroleum available to the world.Interesting story of the Americans in the oil and gas industry who Have changes the business in America, and the world.I found this book interesting and entertaining on several levels. Most importantly, it is about men who are innovative, intelligent, and willing to risk all of their resources on an idea. Interesting information about how the private part of the Americas gas and oil industry operate, and make the intelligent, hardworking and fortunate rich. In America, the owner of the land owns the subsurface rights to whatever is t here. Most of the rest of the world is different and the subsurface rights belong to the state. Thus, any oil company, including small wildcatters, could get into the business by locating land where they believed there was commercially profitable amounts of ail and / or natural gas. A drill lease was signed with the land owner, accompanied with an up front payment, giving the driller the rights to drill on the property for a fixed period of time. If he did not drill, the lease expired. If he drilled and found gas or oil, then the land owner received a percentage of the value of whatever came out of the well.In years past, the oil and gas that was provided by the industry was from porous underground formations. In some cases the oil and or gas was trapped under a fairly impervious cover of rock. The oil or gas driller would look at the information on the underground formations and select where to drill, hoping to hit a place containing natural gas or petroleum. If the well hit the pool of natural gas or petroleum, then the driller wold extract the product through the drill pipe, which was like a straw into a liquid or a gas.There were many cases where there was gas or oil which was not in a pool, but was trapped in a rock formation and would not flow readily. An example is shale, which in many cases, the industry contained natural gas and / or oil, but it could not be commercially extracted by normal drilling where a hole is drilled down to the hydrocarbons, as only a small amount of the natural gas or oil would flow over to well. This hydrocarbons located in shale where they do not freely flow are called "tight" gas or "tight" oil.People in the industry came up with ideas of what to do. One of the things was to do horizontal drilling into and along the layer of shale containing hydrocarbon, this exposed more of the hydrocarbon to the drill, but really did not solve the problem of getting the hydrocarbons to flow. Advances in understanding and documentation the geology underground made ideas like horizontal drilling a practical approach. There is extensive instrumentation in the drill head and still string to tell the drill crew what is happening down the hole. The drill pipe is somewhat flexible and can be bent over a fairly large radius bend. The actual drill at the end of the pipe is driven by the mud pumped down the pipe, which also carries away the drill spoil from the head of the drill. The drill can be driven in different directions by the drill crew, and thus they can drive it around from vertical to horizontal, and get it into the proper depth and keep it at the proper depth.There are interesting stories of a number of the main players including George Mitchell who is considered the person who developed this p;art of the industry. He founded Mitchell Energy. Oryx Energy had Robert Hauptfuhrer as chief executive and Kenneth Bowdon as Geologist. Aubrey McClendon and Tom Ward were the cofounders of Chesapeake Energy. Harold Hamm was the founder of Continental Resources. Mark Papa was the chief executive officer of EOG Resources. All in all an interesting collection of very talented men.They worked in the shale plays including Bakken in North Dakota, Eagle Ford in Texas, Permian in Texas and New Mexico etc. This technology was developed in the USA, but can be applied to many other places in the world.

2013 US crude oil production reached its highest levels in 24 years. FY 2013 oil production was up 15% from 2012. Oil production from hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in North Dakota and Texas made up 83% of the US oil production growth. Natural gas production has seen an equally incredible rise in production and reserves. US natural gas reserves are at an estimated 2,203 trillion cubic feet or enough to last 92 years. This is up ~20% from just a few years ago. The Frackers is the story of a few small oil-gas companies whose wildcatting CEO’s paved the way for this US oil-gas resurgence, while creating billions of dollars of wealth in the process. 10-15 years ago shale formations were the ugly stepchild of the oil-gas industry. Why? First off no one could figure out a way to effectively get the oil-gas out of the shale. The majors didn’t care about shale formations, but that didn’t stop one man.George Mitchell’s, Mitchell Energy & Development Corp, was the first company to really believe shale formations were the future of domestic oil and gas production. He started testing hydraulic fracturing techniques in the Barnett Shale back in the 1980’s. He drove his board members absolutely crazy as he refused to give up on trying to get oil-gas out of shale formations. If George Mitchell weren’t the largest shareholder in his own company the board would have surely kicked him out. It wouldn’t be until he reached the ripe age of 80 when he figured it out, and it would change the oil-gas industry and country forever. Mitchell was the pioneer that paved the way for the next wave of Frackers: Aubrey McClendon of Chesapeake Energy (CHK), Tom Ward of SandRidge Energy (SD), Harold Hamm of Continental Resources (CLR), Mark Papa of EOG Resources (EOG), and Charif Souki of Cheniere Energy (LNG). The book tells the story of each person, their humble beginnings, and the role they played in the US oil-gas boom.It wasn’t Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips, or Chevron that pushed to find these huge shale formations and develop technologies to extract energy from them; it was these small independent oil and gas companies led by headstrong wildcatting CEO’s that wouldn’t take no for an answer. These CEO’s created vast amounts of wealth for themselves in the process. Harold Hamm of Continental is now the richest oilman in the country (net worth $14 billion). Not all of the stories had happy endings. Aubrey McClendon and Tom Ward were kicked out of their companies, but their contributions cannot be under estimated. With a $50,000 investment in 1989, Aubrey built Chesapeake Energy into the 2nd largest natural gas producer in the country. Aubrey was seen as very reckless which forced his dismissal, but he is one of eight CEO’s (including Warren Buffett) that produced at least 20% returns annually over 20 years of service.“Ok great Ian, but what does this book have to do about microcaps?” Good question.Microcap investing in its essence is always an underdog- bet on the jockey type of story. If you find the right company with the right CEO you can make 2-5-10-50x on your money. These oil-gas men and their companies were underdogs, just like many microcaps, but they figured it out and made a killing. Most of the reading I do is reading business biographies. I love reading how an entrepreneur got their start, what they learned, where they failed, etc. This helps me quite a bit when evaluating microcap companies and management. You will really enjoy reading The Frackers.

Sehr lesenswert über Aufstieg und Fall und erneuten Aufstieg der Unternehmer die Öl und Gas suchen fanden. Die Entbehrungen und das Risiko der Suche

Wonderful read on the new development within American oil and gas industry. It talks about various struggles and events building to the birth of shale oil and gas. It is very well written and I thoroughly enjoyed the book.

Easy to read introduction into the history of fracking! Totally apolitical!Excellent!

Comme le précédent livre de Gregory Zuckerman, The Greatest Trade Ever, ce livre est excellent. C'est une histoire des compagnies, mais surtout des hommes, qui depuis plusieurs dizaines d'années préparent la révolution énergétique qu'on vit maintenant. Cheniere, Continental, Chesapeake, Devon, XTO - on retrouve tous les noms auxquels nous sommes devenus habitués, ainsi que les histoires humaines derrière.Livre à recommander pour toute personne qui s'intéresse à cette industrie ou à l'énergie plus généralement.

A great mix of people stuff and the demands of being effective in the world in innovative ways. Seemed like a long read in part because I started out more interested in the technology than in the people - but could not help but be fascinated by the human interest side of the story and that is really what got me through to the end. While suitably focused on the selected "stars" of the development story it sets out to tell, it is also respectful of the challenges beyond the economics focused initiatives that the sector poses for some aspects of how the technology can affect the conditions of life in the affected areas where development takes place. An excellent report on something that will go down as a major time in the economic history of the United States.R^5