The Frackers: The Outrageous Inside Story of the New Billionaire Wildcatters by Gregory Zuckerman
Authors: Gregory Zuckerman
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parts gamblers, salesmen, and geologists. Supremely confident, wildcatters drum up financing from banks or investors by describing how they will tap a gusher in a spot others have dismissed, ignored, or misunderstood. They repeat the pitch, no matter how poor their chances of success, until they have the funds to acquire acreage, drill a well, and wait for oil and gas to flow.
Wildcatters are responsible for discovering the majority of the nation’s oil and gas. By the 1980s, huge gushers were becoming much less frequent in the United States and most of the biggest energy players had moved on to foreign locales. But the allure of the big strike, and the mystique of the wildcatter able to tap a lucrative well that the Goliaths of the industry had missed, captured Dvorin just as it had George Mitchell and countless risk takers before them.
Dvorin didn’t know anyone in the energy world, nor did he have the first idea how to get started. He received a degree in engineering and moved to Texas in the late 1950s with his brother to be closer to the cattle market, not oil or gas wells. The brothers settled in Dallas and built the largest beef-boning operation in the state, Big D Packing. When his financial backers withdrew their support, Dvorin moved to Tyler, Texas, in 1968 and found himself surrounded by oil and gas workers. He was inspired to follow his childhood dream.
Now’s the time,
he thought.
For a while, things went well. Dvorin, heavyset and confident, put together oil and gas deals in north-central Texas and made enough money to raise a son and daughter with his new wife in Plano, an upscale bedroom community outside Dallas. In 1976, while searching for new drilling prospects in a local oil industry library, Dvorin decided to examine the history of drilling in the Dallas County area.
Most energy companies ignore urban areas, for the obvious reason that it’s harder to obtain municipal approvals and persuade homeowners to lease land in more congested areas. George Mitchell once had considered drilling in the Dallas County area, but quickly reconsidered. The hesitance by larger competitors made Dvorin think there just might be some overlooked oil right there in suburbia.
There wasn’t much in the Dallas database, but Dvorin found a well that was widely known among some early Barnett workers; it had been drilled two decades earlier by a company that later became part of the giant Mobil. The file didn’t give details of where the well was. And all the Barnett activity was in Wise and Denton counties, where Mitchell was drilling, about fifteen miles away.
But Dvorin figured out that the well was under land that by then was across the road from Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. “I had a feeling where it was,” he recalls. The surface terrain near the airport “looked oily,” he says.
Information related to the well suggested evidence of natural gas, Dvorin thought. But the well had been plugged, probably because the original driller didn’t think the Barnett rock would produce very much, if anything. If experts were skeptical about Mitchell’s prospects in the Barnett, they were even more dubious about this other area of shale.
“The Barnett was taboo,” Dvorin recalls. “This was a rank wildcat well.”
For nearly a decade, Dvorin didn’t do anything with his research. Then, in 1985, while he was drilling northwest of Fort Worth searching for a layer of rock called the Mississippian reef, he drilled through the Barnett Shale formation. The “mud logger,” a technician Dvorin had hired to monitor and record information brought to the surface, noted tremendous indications of gas and oil, much like those George Mitchell’s crew had detected from the Barnett a few years earlier.
The logger ignored the findings, aware of the frustrating history of this rock. Dvorin was intrigued when he heard the results, though. He remembered the Dallas County well he had tracked down. And he heard rumors that
Wildcatters are responsible for discovering the majority of the nation’s oil and gas. By the 1980s, huge gushers were becoming much less frequent in the United States and most of the biggest energy players had moved on to foreign locales. But the allure of the big strike, and the mystique of the wildcatter able to tap a lucrative well that the Goliaths of the industry had missed, captured Dvorin just as it had George Mitchell and countless risk takers before them.
Dvorin didn’t know anyone in the energy world, nor did he have the first idea how to get started. He received a degree in engineering and moved to Texas in the late 1950s with his brother to be closer to the cattle market, not oil or gas wells. The brothers settled in Dallas and built the largest beef-boning operation in the state, Big D Packing. When his financial backers withdrew their support, Dvorin moved to Tyler, Texas, in 1968 and found himself surrounded by oil and gas workers. He was inspired to follow his childhood dream.
Now’s the time,
he thought.
For a while, things went well. Dvorin, heavyset and confident, put together oil and gas deals in north-central Texas and made enough money to raise a son and daughter with his new wife in Plano, an upscale bedroom community outside Dallas. In 1976, while searching for new drilling prospects in a local oil industry library, Dvorin decided to examine the history of drilling in the Dallas County area.
Most energy companies ignore urban areas, for the obvious reason that it’s harder to obtain municipal approvals and persuade homeowners to lease land in more congested areas. George Mitchell once had considered drilling in the Dallas County area, but quickly reconsidered. The hesitance by larger competitors made Dvorin think there just might be some overlooked oil right there in suburbia.
There wasn’t much in the Dallas database, but Dvorin found a well that was widely known among some early Barnett workers; it had been drilled two decades earlier by a company that later became part of the giant Mobil. The file didn’t give details of where the well was. And all the Barnett activity was in Wise and Denton counties, where Mitchell was drilling, about fifteen miles away.
But Dvorin figured out that the well was under land that by then was across the road from Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. “I had a feeling where it was,” he recalls. The surface terrain near the airport “looked oily,” he says.
Information related to the well suggested evidence of natural gas, Dvorin thought. But the well had been plugged, probably because the original driller didn’t think the Barnett rock would produce very much, if anything. If experts were skeptical about Mitchell’s prospects in the Barnett, they were even more dubious about this other area of shale.
“The Barnett was taboo,” Dvorin recalls. “This was a rank wildcat well.”
For nearly a decade, Dvorin didn’t do anything with his research. Then, in 1985, while he was drilling northwest of Fort Worth searching for a layer of rock called the Mississippian reef, he drilled through the Barnett Shale formation. The “mud logger,” a technician Dvorin had hired to monitor and record information brought to the surface, noted tremendous indications of gas and oil, much like those George Mitchell’s crew had detected from the Barnett a few years earlier.
The logger ignored the findings, aware of the frustrating history of this rock. Dvorin was intrigued when he heard the results, though. He remembered the Dallas County well he had tracked down. And he heard rumors that
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