The Seventeen-Year Overnight Wonder: George Mitchell and Unlocking the Barnett Shale

Abstract

June 2012 The Journal of American History 229 Just as the discovery of oil at Spindletop near the Texas coast in 1901 launched a new chapter in the development of the American petroleum industry, a century later the opening of massive natural gas production in north Texas from a geological formation called the Barnett Shale has begun a new era in world energy. Drilling in the Barnett Shale since 2000 touched off an urban gas boom throughout the greater Fort Worth metropolitan area. Far more significant, however, the Barnett Shale bonanza has revealed the incredible petroleum potential in shale formations throughout the United States. “Shale booms” have materialized in places as far flung as south Texas, North Dakota, and Pennsylvania, as well as overseas. Shale production could offer the United States far greater energy independence than anyone could have anticipated a decade ago, but the technology essential to it has also generated environmental apprehensions and controversy. As is so often true in the history of American petroleum exploration, the pioneer wildcatter to open the Barnett Shale was an independent prospector, the Houstonian George Mitchell, who spent seventeen years and millions of dollars to obtain natural gas from the formation. His story demonstrates how independent oilmen do business and why they remain important in an industry best known for its giant players. Mention the petroleum industry and most Americans are likely to think of Big Oil— the major multinational companies such as ExxonMobil—but the American oil industry has always included a majority of small participants that are not vertically integrated and are usually regionally focused. In the nineteenth century, the term independent in the oil industry referred to any firm or operator that existed outside John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil empire; by the 1920s it had come to stand for the smaller members of the oil and gas industry. Most domestic wildcat exploration—the search for oil and gas in areas far from existing production or in rock formations considered unlikely for commercial success—has been done by independents, perhaps because they usually do not have to justify unconventional projects to conservative boards of directors. Independent individual prospectors such as Patillo Higgins at Spindletop and Columbus Marion “Dad” Joiner in east Texas were free to challenge industry orthodoxy and brought in spectacular discoveries. Most independents, however, are not in the game to obtain giant finds. With The Seventeen-Year Overnight Wonder: George Mitchell and Unlocking the Barnett Shale