With horizontal drilling came advanced “fracking,” which involves cracking open the rocks in a drilling area with high-pressure water and forcing sand (proppant) into the cracks to hold them open. In the oil industry, “bad rocks” are rocks that contain oil, but don’t want to let the oil out. Fracking makes “bad rocks” into better rocks. By using proppant to prop open the cracks, fracking helps the bad rocks to release their oil. More oil equals more money. New resource plays – large areas of shale-oil deposits and tight-sand-oil deposits like the Bakken Shale, the Eagle Ford Shale, and the Permian Basin – have taken the exploration risk out of the oil and gas sector. Thanks to the use of horizontal drilling and fracking, 90% of the new targets in these areas yield oil. Nine out of every 10 wells are productive. With these new technologies, the only risk once a resource is identified is mechanical failure. And mechanical failure is rare in oil operations today.
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