Texas billionaire George Mitchell died at his home in Galveston Friday at age 94, according to Bloomberg. Mitchell’s innovations in natural gas drilling revolutionized the extraction practice called “fracking” in the 1990s, paving the way for the current energy boom that freed the US from dependence on foreign energy and made it a net exporter.
His use of horizontal drilling techniques tapped previously unreachable natural gas stores near Fort Worth, earning him the nickname “Father of the Barnett Shale.” The innovation is now the common practice in fracking, and made the stores in the largest formation, the Marcellus Shale underneath Pennsylvania, reachable.
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