API Report: Amidst Shale Revolution, Industry Safer Than It's Ever Been

June 6, 2017

The American Petroleum Institute (API) released a new report last week that discusses the long history of hydraulic fracturing in the United States and forecasts the outlook for the future. Spoiler alert: the best may be yet to come. And as the report notes, even as fracking continues to establish the U.S. as a global energy superpower, the industry is as safe as it has ever been due to a continued commitment to responsible development.

Though fracking has only been part of the general public discussion the last 10 years or so, the API report notes the well stimulation practice was first used in the United States in 1947 and was being used more than 3,000 times per month by the 1950s to improve the productivity of oil and gas wells across the country while the U.S. economy boomed in the post-World War II era. But it wasn't until the 1980s that the practice was paired with horizontal drilling to revolutionize the production of natural gas and oil from previously inaccessible shale formations.

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