The Outrageous Inside Story of the New Billionaire Wildcatters
Starred review from December 2, 2013
Too little attention has been paid to one of America's biggest economic and scientific revolution of recent decades: the tapping of abundant oil and natural gas reserves within our own borders using a technique called fracking. Wall Street Journal reporter Zuckerman (The Greatest Trade) sets out to change that with his unique talent of translating complex aspects of finances and geology into prose that reads like a blockbuster thriller. Focusing on a half dozen "wildcatters," the ones who seek out potential drilling sites, Zuckerman takes us through their decades long drought while they refined the techniques of horizontal hydraulic drilling that eventually would turn our country from energy dependent to political independence, and make a few billionaires along the way. Such success comes with some hard-learned morals as most of these men end up losing the very companies they founded. These present day wildcatters are addicted to oil, and eventually cause such an abundance of natural gas that one speculator actually goes so far as to raise billions in an attempt to export it. Environmental impact is given little attention, a worrisome absence that can only be explained by the fact that Zuckerman's focus is on the men who truly care little about it. Fortunately, Zuckerman tackles some of the popular misconceptions about the environmental threats from fracking in the afterward, while at the same time he urges some much needed caution and stricter regulations on an industry that initially set out to save us and should not, in the end, destroy us.