How You Actually Crack Shale Rock 2 Miles Underground

How is it possible to drill through 10,000 feet of impermeable rock, turn 90 degrees and continue drilling horizontally all that way under the surface, then blast chemical water and sand at high pressure to crack open rocks, and then – if that weren’t enough – capture the gas once it has come back up the well to the surface? Questions aside, the American technology is real and it is turning the energy world and likely the U.S. economy upside down.

It is still hard to imagine the process described above, but understanding how the technology works leads to more informed debate about the process and its pros, cons, and overall impact on the environment and the economy. So, we took to the wonderfully open internet and found a helping hand in this article about Exxon’s big bet on natural gas in Fortune. The article is worth a read as well. It describes how Rex Tillerson, now the CEO of Exxon Mobil, was working for the company in the 1970’s while an experimental technique called hydraulic fracturing being born. Take a glance at the diagram of the well half way down on the right on this page and the “How Fracking Works” diagrams. Regardless of the way your feel about fracking and the natural gas revolution taking place in the United States, you have to admit that the technology is truly amazing.

Image by Shuli Hallak