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Hydraulic fracturing [a] is a well stimulation technique involving the fracturing of formations in bedrock by a pressurized liquid. The process involves the high-pressure injection of "fracking fluid" (primarily water, containing sand or other proppants suspended with the aid of thickening agents) into a wellbore to create cracks in the deep rock formations through which natural gas, petroleum ...
Environmental Protection Agency illustration of the water cycle of hydraulic fracturing. Fracking in the United States began in 1949. [1] According to the Department of Energy (DOE), by 2013 at least two million oil and gas wells in the US had been hydraulically fractured, and that of new wells being drilled, up to 95% are hydraulically fractured.
Hydraulic fracturing began as an experiment in 1947, [6] and the first commercially successful application followed in 1949. As of 2012, 2.5 million "frac jobs" had been performed worldwide on oil and gas wells, over one million of those within the U.S. [ 7 ] [ 8 ] Such treatment is generally necessary to achieve adequate flow rates in shale ...
In the United Kingdom, the first hydraulic fracturing of an oil well was carried out shortly after discovery of the West Sole field in the North Sea in 1965. After the industry started to use intermediate and high-strength proppants in the late 1970s, hydraulic fracturing became a common technique in the North Sea oil and gas wells.
2009: First hydraulic fracturing of a horizontally drilled well in New Brunswick in the McCully area. [59] 2009: Start of exploratory drilling and hydraulic fracturing in the Elgin area, south of Petitcodiac. [59] 2009–2010: The first shale-targeted wells are drilled in New Brunswick – four wells in the Elgin area, south of Petitcodiac.
The boom began with the discovery of Parshall Oil Field in 2006, and peaked in 2012, [35] [36] but with substantially less growth noted since 2015 due to a global decline in oil prices. [37] The boom relied upon horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing to recover oil from tight oil deposits. [38]
In the 1980s and 1990s, the company experimented with application of different techniques of hydraulic fracturing of the Barnett Shale of Texas, eventually finding the right technique to economically extract the natural gas in the formation. The approach was widely adopted by the gas industry and spawned a new gas boom in North America.
Massive hydraulic fracturing of gas wells in tight sandstone began in Germany in 1975, and became common during the period 1978–1985, when more wells received massive hydraulic fracs in Germany than in any other European country. Germany also had the largest hydraulic fracturing jobs in Europe, using up to 650 tonnes of proppant per well.