George Mitchell, the Texas entrepreneur responsible for pioneering the innovative technique known as hydraulic fracturing, died on Friday at his residence in Galveston. He was 94.
So great was Mitchell’s impact on America’s energy outlook that Daniel Yergin, the energy scholar and author, proposed that Mr. Mitchell be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. “It is because of him that we can talk seriously about ‘energy independence,’ ” Yergin said.
According to The New York Times, the most significant chapter in Mitchell’s life came in his twilight years:
In the 1980s and ’90s, when many energy analysts foresaw only irreversible declines in hydrocarbon supplies, Mr. Mitchell got busy poking holes in Texas dirt on the hunch that they were wrong. Marshaling mostly existing technologies, he began fracturing shale rock formations in fields where he had long pumped oil and gas at shallower depths.
After 17 years of trying, Mr. Mitchell finally hit pay dirt with gushers of gas in 1998. The flow was so prodigious that a competitor thought that the announcement was a practical joke. The $6 million that Mr. Mitchell had put into the project was “surely the best development money in the history of gas,” The Economist magazine said.
The son of a Greek goatherd, Mitchell attended Texas A&M University and was trained as a petroleum engineer and geologist. In addition to his success in the energy industry, Mitchell developed The Woodlands north of Houston on 27,000 piney acres.
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