Normally on “Mining and Refining,” we concentrate on the actual material that’s mined and refined. We’ve covered everything from copper to tungsten, with side trips to more unusual materials like ...

The U.S. produced more oil in 2023 than has ever been produced in any year by any country, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Big Oil has become more productive as horizontal ...

Horizontal drilling and fracking as a combined technique grew in popularity in part because it was shown to increase the ...

Horizontal drilling isn't new. Such wells have been drilled for the better part of a century. But combining it with hydraulic fracturing to produce gas and oil from shale is a far more recent ...

Of all the technological progress of the past few decades, there is a good argument to be made that a series of fossil fuel industry innovations that helped spark the U.S. shale oil boom have had the ...

Despite early predictions of a natural gas crisis in the early 2000s, the U.S. dramatically increased its natural gas production, particularly through fracking and horizontal drilling techniques. This ...

As the U.S. energy boom has taken off over the past several years, the term "fracking" has become a household name. But fracking, which involves pumping massive quantities of water, proppant, and ...