Question: What Texas oilman is considered the “Father of Fracking”?
Answer: George P. Mitchell. Born in Galveston in 1919, Mitchell graduated first in his class at Texas A&M, where he studied petrochemical engineering and geology. After serving in the Army Corps of Engineers during World War II, he became involved in oil exploration. Although Mitchell didn’t develop the process of hydraulic fracturing—injecting a mixture of high-pressure water and sand into rock formations to break them apart and access trapped oil and natural gas deposits—he was the first to demonstrate its profitability as an extraction method. Together with horizontal drilling, fracking, as it came to be called, led to an oil boom in Texas and other parts of the country that has lasted nearly two decades.
