Fracking did not fall out of the sky, and it certainly was not dreamed up by some modern corporate villain twirling a mustache. It is the product of centuries of science, engineering, and trial and error. In 1643, Evangelista Torricelli used mercury to measure pressure. Four thousand years ago, the Egyptians invented the pump. In 1897, Rudolf Diesel built the diesel engine. Stack those achievements together and you have the foundation of hydraulic fracturing, whether activists like it or not.
The first modern frack job was performed in 1949 by Halliburton. Even earlier, in 1865, E.A. Roberts patented the use of nitroglycerin in Pennsylvania oil wells. None of this is dark science. It is applied physics. To date, roughly two million frack jobs have been completed in the United States. Thousands have been done by individual companies without incident. Yet the public remains suspicious, thanks largely to culture war propaganda and wealthy foundations selling fear to people who do not benefit from it.
Fracking is a precisely engineered process. Rock mechanics determine fracture pressure. Engineers calculate slurry volumes and pump rates. Wireline crews isolate the well in stages, perforate the casing, and frac fleets pump water, sand, and a small amount of chemicals at extreme pressures. This happens a mile or two underground, then stretches horizontally for miles through shale. That horizontal breakthrough, pioneered by George Mitchell, unlocked energy in the source rock itself rather than relying on traditional traps. It multiplied access to hydrocarbons by hundreds of times. That is why it worked, and why it changed the world.
The loudest criticism focuses on water. Millions of gallons sound scary until you compare them to golf courses, which use more water than all of North American fracking combined, and recycle almost none of it. Golf produces zero energy. Fracking powers the country. Many operators now recycle wastewater into new frac jobs, eliminating much of the concern entirely.
Then there are chemicals, another favorite scare tactic. Polyacrylamides are used in shampoo and sunscreen. Guar gum comes from beans. Biocides are comparable to pool chlorine. Acid becomes benign after activation. If frack fluid were the poison critics claim, Chris Wright would not have famously demonstrated its safety and walked away just fine.
Claims that fracking destabilizes the earth or contaminates aquifers are fiction. I have never seen an aquifer intrusion. Not once. Meanwhile, electric frac fleets are replacing diesel ones without any mandate. The industry did that voluntarily.
Today, three quarters of U.S. oil production comes from fracked wells. Roughly nine million barrels per day. Eliminate that, as activist foundations want, and America becomes energy poor overnight. According to climate analyst Bjorn Lomborg, going fully electric would require three months of battery backup. We currently have about ten minutes. The cost would approach one third of U.S. GDP and leave an environmental wreckage far worse than anything fracking has ever produced.
Now add AI data centers and Silicon Valley’s sudden love of natural gas. Reality has arrived. Fracking is not a temporary bridge. It is the backbone of American energy dominance, something President Trump understood clearly. Cheap, reliable energy is not optional. It is civilization.