Shale Boom: The Barnett Shale Play and Fort Worth

By Diana Davids Hinton

In 2000, most forecasters agreed that American petroleum production was in irreversible decline. Fourteen years later, the United States was the world's largest combined producer of oil and gas, able to ship large quantities of petroleum overseas. The developments responsible for this dramatic revival, which changed industry dynamics on a global scale, began in the Barnett Shale. Shale Boom describes how independent oilman George P. Mitchell developed technology that would unlock trillions of cubic feet of previously inaccessible natural gas. When he succeeded, oilmen used in to uncover vast reserves in the North Texas rock formation known as the Barnett Shale, prompting a gas boom that covered twenty-one Texas counties and encompassed the Fort Worth metropolitan area. The boom created enormous wealth but brought drilling rigs, truck traffic, and noise into urban neighborhoods-and created safety and environmental concerns that centered on the hydraulic fracturing technology known as fracking that made the windfall possible. As fracking was adapted to develop shale in other areas, controversy over it became national and global. What happened in the Barnett Shale, however, meant profound changes for the future of petroleum at home and abroad. Through meticulous research and on-on-one interviews with major players, Diana Davis Hinton, coauthor of six previous books on the history of the American petroleum industry, reveals the wildcatter gambles, the scientific breakthroughs, and the corporate strategies that played out in the Barnett-and explores both the local impact of the phenomenon and its broader implications for the nation and the world. Book jacket.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0875656854
• ISBN13: 9780875656854
• Release Date: July 2018
• Publisher: Texas Christian University Press
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.9" x 8.9"