A rig on the Permian Basin, near Pecos, Texas.
Photographer: Julie DermanskyFrackers Are in Crisis, Endangering America’s Energy Renaissance
Even before the pandemic, West Texas was reeling and Wall Street was running out of patience with the industry.
Twenty years ago, before the U.S. oil industry became a global energy power that strikes fear into Saudi Arabia, brothers Dan and Farris Wilks started Frac Tech Services LLC in tiny Cisco, Texas. The company provided equipment for hydraulic fracturing, aka fracking, the breaking up of tight sedimentary rock by blasting water, sand, and assorted chemicals through horizontal bores at fantastically high pressure.
Frac Tech grew into one of the most successful pressure pumpers as the U.S. experienced a boom first in shale gas, then in shale oil. The Wilks brothers became billionaires when they sold Frac Tech in 2011, just as shale oil was transforming the U.S. into one of the world’s biggest producers of crude. Last September the country became a net exporter of crude and petroleum products for the first full month in at least 70 years.