The Tea-Partiers and right-wing ideologues are going to hope you don't read this story. Likewise with a lot of Republicans who have been bullied by the far right into forgetting the pragmatism that used to be evident in the GOP during much of the last half of the 20th Century. That's because this story is the exact opposite of what those folks like to tell us regarding government spending and government "interference" with the private sector.

It has to do with the extraction of natural gas from shale rock, through a chemical process known as "fracking". This process is turning the US energy industry upside-down. Given the commercial success of fracking during the past decade, the US may soon become a net exporter of natural gas. Quite a change from the shortages we experienced just a decade ago.

The story that most people don't know, however, is that government funding, research, and tax credits starting in the mid-1970's were difference makers in the success that George Mitchell and his company, Mitchell Energy, had in developing the viable fracking process that we know today. Specifically, the Department of Energy and other government sources funded efforts in massive hydraulic fracking (MHF), 3-D mapping, horizontal drilling, and horizontal wells, all of which helped Mitchell achieve the commercial success we now are witnessing.

Back in the 70's the idea of fracking had been around for a while; it had been used to some extent in limestone deposits, but it had never been used successfully in shale rock. Most people in the energy industry were dubious as to whether it ever could be used in shale and many felt that the government research begun in the Ford and Carter administrations was a waste of taxpayer money. (Sound familiar? The same thing has been said in recent years regarding government funding of solar and wind research.)

But as we now see, the fracking process has been adapted to work in shale rock, albeit with some side effects that still need to be addressed. While some on the right try to minimize the role that federal funding played to get us to this point, here are some of the key aspects of the federal government's role in helping to develop shale rock fracking from the 1970's into the 21st Century:

In 1976, two government engineers patented an early-stage directional drilling technology that became the precursor to horizontal drilling.
Slick-water fracking, the technology that Mitchell used to extract gas from shale, was adapted from massive hydraulic fracturing, a technology first demonstrated by the Department of Energy (DOE) in 1977.
Dozens of private gas companies partnered with federal agencies in pilot demonstration projects during the Eastern Gas Shales Project, testing new methods for shale gas extraction.
The government provided tax credits for unconventional gas drilling from 1980 until 2002.
The first successful multi-fracture directional drill was completed by a joint DOE-private venture in 1986.
In 1991, the Gas Research Institute, publicly funded in part by a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission-approved surcharge on gas prices and overseen by federal regulators, recommended and subsidized Mitchell Energy's first horizontal well.
Also in 1991, the Energy Department provided Mitchell Energy with micro-seismic (3D) mapping assistance through scientists with the Sandia National Laboratory. This allowed Mitchell to determine the location of shale fractures, which facilitated successful drilling.
All in all, estimates are that tens of billions of dollars of public money went into research projects and tax credits related to shale rock fracking.

Developing new technologies is very expensive, usually costing more than private industry can afford to fund on their own. (In other examples, federal money also has helped support nuclear power, cell phones, personal computers, and jet turbines.) During the 1980's and '90's, at a time when energy prices were low and Congress was looking to eliminate fossil energy subsidies, George Mitchell personally lobbied Congress to continue the federal government's support in this area. He knew the cost of this developmental effort and he knew that federal assistance was needed.

To the chagrin of the far right, who like to describe George Mitchell as a lone wolf, pioneering this technology in the backwaters of rural Texas, the true story became more widely known back in 2011 when Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus began researching the government's role in developing successful shale rock fracking. We've used their articles as the source for our reporting here.

During their research, Shellenberger and Nordhaus interviewed Dan Steward, a former Mitchell Energy Vice President. Here are a few interesting quotes from Steward as reported in the Shellenberger / Nordhaus articles:

"I'm conservative as hell." But when asked about the role of government, Steward told us, "They did a hell of a lot of work, and I can't give them enough credit for that. [The Department of Energy] started it, and other people took the ball and ran with it. You cannot diminish DOE's involvement."

Steward said the government directly or indirectly supported Mitchell energy every step of the way. "[The government] helped us to evaluate how much gas was there and evaluate its critical properties," he explained. "They helped us with our first horizontal well. They helped us with pressure build-ups. And we worked with them on crack mapping."

At the end of the interview we asked Steward -- a self-identified conservative who told {us} that "Reagan did a world of good for the gas business" -- what he thought of the recent criticisms of government support for advanced energy technologies.

"I don't bad mouth government involvement in solar and wind because we have to be experimenting with that," Steward said. "We're not far enough along for solar and wind to provide much energy. But government has to be looking down the road. Industry doesn't look as far down the road as the government should."

To read Shellenberger and Nordaus' article, here is a link to it, along with a link to their follow-up article that addresses some of the conservative responses to their original.

As for our friends on the right, who aren't as pragmatic as Steward when it comes to the role of government involvement, we guess they could start using one of President Reagan's quotes when he spoke to the nation about his administration's Iran-Contra scandal, "My heart and my best intentions still tell me {my belief is} true; but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not."

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