Texas oilman Greek-American George P. Mitchell, known as the father of the fracking process, died on July 26 at his home in Galveston, Texas at the age of 94. He was the co-founder of Mitchell Energy & Development Corporation.
He had spent years pushing the engineers of his company to find ways to get more natural gas out of the ground, especially from rocks that seemed too tough to drill. They finally figured out successful ways to break up shale rocks with pressurized water, chemicals and sand in the process known as hydraulic fracturing, as reported in The Wall Street Journal.
“George Mitchell, more than anyone else, is responsible for the most important energy innovation of the 21st Century,” Daniel Yergin, Vice Chairman of consulting firm IHS and a Pulitzer Prize-winning author on energy, noted.
Mitchell’s parents were poor Greek immigrants. He graduated with a degree in petroleum engineering in 1940 from Texas A&M University. Along with his brother, they started an oil exploration business in Houston in 1946, after serving in the US Army Corps of Engineers during World War II.
In the 1970’s, Mitchell put his energy wealth to work developing thousands of acres of pine forest north of Houston into a master-planned residential community, The Woodlands, according to the Journal.
“George didn’t want The Woodlands to become just another bedroom community but to also become a major employment center,” Bill White, a former Houston mayor and assistant secretary of energy, said. “That’s why today there are just as many people commuting into The Woodlands as there are out of it,” he added.
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