This method, known as fracking, would soon dominate the industry and ultimately cause controversies across the nation, including congressional hearings and environmental protests.

Due to its messiness and high cost, the nuclear project was discarded in favor of a new method, which became commercially viable in the 1990s due to George Mitchell’s pioneering innovations. While the bombs effectively released the region’s natural gas, amounting to approximately 10 years of production, the gas was turned mildly radioactive, as kypton-85 and tritium were found. The US government gave oil companies these nuclear bombs as an incentive to keep cheap energy flowing. Maddow recounts 1969’s Project Rulison, during which a 40-kiloton nuclear bomb was detonated thousands of feet below ground in Colorado to release natural gas in the Rocky Mountains. In Equatorial Guinea, where abject poverty prevails, the nation’s totalitarian President Teodoro Obiang amasses personal wealth from drilling deals.Įvery major chapter in the story of Big Oil and Gas is connected to the driving momentum of the industry in America, however. In Russia the government has gone all in on the oil and gas industry, largely due to the insistence of Vladimir Putin. The boundaries of capitalism and democracy in America were still being drawn, and the rules of the game still being written.The result of these connections is an alarming indictment of an industry that shapes entire economies and drives countless individuals to corruption, as evidenced in the deals being made in Russia and Equatorial Guinea, for instance. #4 The most common explanation for Rockefeller’s success was that he was just following the rules of his time. Rockefeller was the richest and most powerful commodity producer on the continent. #3 The Big Trust was a term used in the nineteenth century to describe monopoly, and the most powerful trust was the Rockefeller-controlled Oil Trust. The most widely used lighting oil at the time, which was struck from soft coal, was dirty kerosene from petroleum was just the thing to illuminate the clean, bright new future. His company, Standard Oil, shipped a million barrels of refined oil in a single year. #2 By 1875, Rockefeller had taken control of every major refining center in the country. The first commercially viable gas-powered engine, and the ensuing addiction, were still a few generations away. Sample Book Insights: #1 The oil industry was the result of a big bang that occurred in 1859 when Edwin Drake and his hired man, Uncle Billy Smith, pulled the equivalent of maybe twenty forty-two-gallon barrels of crude oil from the ground on a good day. Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

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