In the 1970s, the US underwent an energy crisis, with prices of oil and gas from the Middle East greatly rising. So, the US government turned to increasing the efficiency of a method of fossil fuel production that could take place within the US: hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Hydraulic fracturing involves drilling thousands of feet beneath the surface, into shale. Shale is a common type of sedimentary rock that often contains large stores of natural gas. Fracking extracts the gas from shale by shooting water into the drilled hole, creating high pressure environments that cause the shale to fracture. These fractures release the natural gas stored inside of the rock into the water, which can later be collected.

Fracking has problems: its critics point out that it can cause contamination of local water sources, it can cause an increase in earthquakes, it can produce large amounts of methane (a greenhouse gas), and it uses up vast amounts of water. It is also linked to many health problems, and often involves destroying habitats. Nevertheless, despite the major downsides to fracking, it has become a popular source of energy production in the US, producing ⅔ of all natural gas used in the US. Funding from the government allowed for the fracking industry to thrive, which though now shown to have severe problems, did help the US gain energy independence.

While fracking as a method has existed for a long time, the U.S. Department of Energy funded the major breakthroughs that now allows fracking to be such a pervasive industry. It funded the Gas Research Institute, an industry research facility, that worked alongside the Sandia National Laboratory, to create the technologies necessary to improve fracking. Although fracking was invented in 1947, it at first could only be used on limestone, and on relatively smaller scales. It is thanks to the work done at the Gas Research Institute that massive hydraulic fracturing of shale was able to be implemented.

The Gas Research Institute invented diamond studded drill bits, and downhole motors, which allowed for steerable drills that could go through even the hardest of materials. They also invented microseismic imaging, a process in which sensors detect seismic waves to make a 3D model of the fractures deep underground, allowing well operators to detect where more fracking needs to happen. The data from microseismic imaging, and the ability to autonomously control steerable drills, lead to the invention of horizontal drilling, which created much more efficient gas collection, as shale lies in horizontal layers.

The Department of Energy was also simultaneously funding the Eastern Shales Gas Project, which focused on making hydraulic fracturing applicable for commercial use. In 1977, using the technologies invented by the Gas Research Institute, the project was able to demonstrate the first large-scale use of fracking in shale.

Since then, natural gas from hydraulic fracturing has come to account for a quarter of all the U.S’s energy use. While fracking has begun to fall out of use due to its environmental impact, this story highlights the outsize impact that government funding into new types of energy production can have.